Accretion disks around kicked black holes: post-kick dynamics
Persistent URL
Author(s)
Ponce, Marcelo
Faber, Joshua A.
Lombardi, James C., Jr. (Jamie)
Date Issued
December 29, 2012
Abstract
Numerical calculations of merging black hole binaries indicate that asymmetric emission of gravitational radiation can kick the merged black hole at up to thousands of km s–1, and a number of systems have been observed recently whose properties are consistent with an active galactic nucleus containing a supermassive black hole moving with substantial velocity with respect to its broader accretion disk. We study here the effect of an impulsive kick delivered to a black hole on the dynamical evolution of its accretion disk using a smoothed particle hydrodynamics code, focusing attention on the role played by the kick angle with respect to the orbital angular momentum vector of the pre-kicked disk. We find that for more vertical kicks, for which the angle between the kick and the normal vector to the disk θ lesssim 30°, a gap remains present in the inner disk, in accordance with the prediction from an analytic collisionless Keplerian disk model, while for more oblique kicks with θ gsim 45°, matter rapidly accretes toward the black hole. There is a systematic trend for higher potential luminosities for more oblique kick angles for a given black hole mass, disk mass, and kick velocity, and we find large amplitude oscillations in time in the case of a kick oriented 60° from the vertical.
Journal
The Astrophysical Journal
Department
Physics
Citation
Ponce, M., Faber, J.A., Lombardi, James C. Jr. (2012). Accretion disks around kicked black holes: Post-kick dynamics. The Astrophysical Journal 745(1): 1-21. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/745/1/71
Publisher
Institute of Physics
Version of Article
Published article
DOI
10.1088/0004-637X/745/1/71
ISSN
0004-637X
e1538-4357
Rights
This article has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal © 2012 Ponce, Faber, and Lombardi. Published by Institute of Physics. All rights reserved.
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