Hypervelocity binaries from close encounters with a SMBH-IMBH binary: orbital properties and diagnostics

TL;DR

This study investigates the production and properties of hypervelocity binaries resulting from encounters with SMBH-IMBH binaries, revealing their potential as diagnostics for black hole configurations and as sources for gravitational wave detection.

Contribution

The paper introduces high-precision N-body simulations of stellar binary encounters with SMBH-IMBH binaries, highlighting the conditions for efficient HVB production and their use in constraining black hole orbital planes.

Findings

Few HVBs produced in the Galactic center with a $4\times10^3 M_\odot$ IMBH

Prograde coplanar orbits yield more HVBs

Ejected binaries are highly eccentric and potential gravitational wave sources

Abstract

Hypervelocity binaries (HVBs) can be produced by a close encounter between stellar binaries and supermassive black hole (SMBH)-intermediate massive black hole (IMBH) binaries. We perform scattering experiments between tight stellar binaries and an SMBH-IMBH binary (within the observationally allowed parameters), using high-precision N-body integrations. Simulation results show that only a few HVBs can be produced in the Galactic center if it harbors a $4\times10^3M_\odot$ IMBH. However, we find that tight HVBs can be efficiently produced in prograde coplanar orbits with respect to the SMBH-IMBH binary. Therefore, the trajectories of the HVBs provide a promising way to constrain the IMBH orbital plane, if one exists. More importantly, we find that the ejected tight binaries are eccentric. For other galaxies hosting equal-mass SMBH binaries for which the HVB ejection rate is much higher relative to SMBH-IMBH binaries, these ejected compact binaries constitute promising extragalactic merger sources that could be detected by gravitational wave detectors.