Eccentric evolution of supermassive black hole binaries

Abstract

In recent numerical simulations, it has been found that the eccentricity of supermassive black hole (SMBH)-intermediate black hole (IMBH) binaries grows toward unity through interactions with the stellar background. This increase of eccentricity reduces the merging timescale of the binary through the gravitational radiation to a value well below the Hubble time. It also gives a theoretical explanation of the existence of eccentric binaries such as that in OJ287. In self-consistent N-body simulations, this increase of eccentricity is always observed. On the other hand, the result of the scattering experiment between SMBH binaries and field stars indicated that the eccentricity dose not change significantly. This discrepancy leaves the high eccentricity of the SMBH binaries in N-body simulations unexplained. Here, we present a stellar-dynamical mechanism that drives the increase of the eccentricity of an SMBH binary with a large mass ratio. There are two key processes involved. The first one is the Kozai mechanism under a non-axisymmetric potential, which effectively randomizes the angular momenta of surrounding stars. The other is the selective ejection of stars with prograde orbits. Through these two mechanisms, field stars extract the orbital angular momentum of the SMBH binary. Our proposed mechanism causes the increase in the eccentricity of most of SMBH binaries, resulting in the rapid merger through gravitational wave radiation. Our result has given a definite solution to the "last-parsec problem." © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.