Accretion disks around kicked black holes: post-kick dynamics
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Issue Date
2012-12-29
Authors
Ponce, Marcelo
Faber, Joshua A.
Lombardi, James C., Jr. (Jamie)
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Keywords
accretion , accretion disks , black hole physics , hydrodynamics
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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.
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Physics
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This article has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal © 2012 Ponce, Faber, and Lombardi. Published by Institute of Physics. All rights reserved.
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
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Institute of Physics