Fly-by galaxy encounters with multiple black holes produce star-forming linear wakes
Nianyi Chen, Patrick LaChance, Yueying Ni, Tiziana Di Matteo, Rupert, Croft, Priyamvada Natarajan, Simeon Bird

TL;DR
This study uses cosmological simulations to show that galaxy fly-by encounters involving multiple black holes can produce star-forming linear wakes similar to recent observations, predicting their properties and observational signatures.
Contribution
It demonstrates that fly-by galaxy encounters with dual black holes can produce observable star-forming linear wakes, providing a new explanation for these features beyond black hole wakes.
Findings
Fly-by encounters produce linear star-forming wakes matching observations.
Wakes last approximately 100 Myr, making them rare but observable.
X-ray emission from AGN in the wakes should be detectable.
Abstract
We look for simulated star-forming linear wakes such as the one recently discovered by van Dokkum et al. (2023) in the cosmological hydrodynamical simulation ASTRID. Amongst the runaway black holes in ASTRID, none are able to produce clear star-forming wakes. Meanwhile, fly-by encounters, typically involving a compact galaxy (with a central black hole) and a star-forming galaxy (with a duo of black holes) reproduce remarkably well many of the key properties (its length and linearity; recent star formation, etc.) of the observed star-forming linear feature. We predict the feature to persist for approximately 100 Myr in such a system and hence constitute a rare event. The feature contains a partly stripped galaxy (with ) and a dual BH system () in its brightest knot. X-ray emission from AGN in the knot should be…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstrophysical Phenomena and Observations · Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena · Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
