Forming off-center massive black hole binaries in dwarf galaxies through Jacobi capture

TL;DR

This study investigates how off-center massive black hole binaries can form in dwarf galaxies with cores, highlighting the role of chaotic Jacobi captures in facilitating black hole mergers and growth.

Contribution

It introduces a new scenario involving Jacobi capture for off-center black hole mergers in dwarf galaxies with cores, supported by controlled simulations.

Findings

Jacobi captures occur in about 13% of simulated cases

Capture likelihood depends on black hole mass and orbital parameters

Chaotic nature of captures suggests complex dynamics in off-center mergers

Abstract

It is well established that black holes reside in the central regions of virtually all types of known galaxies. Recent observational and numerical studies however challenge this picture, suggesting that intermediate-mass black holes in dwarf galaxies may be found on orbits far from the center. In particular, constant-density cores minimize orbital energy losses due to dynamical friction, and allow black holes to settle on stable off-center orbits. Using controlled simulations, we study the dynamics of off-center black holes in dwarf galaxies with such cores. We propose a new scenario to describe off-center mergers of massive black holes, starting with a Jacobi capture. We focus on initially circular and co-planar black hole orbits and explore a large parameter space of black hole masses and orbital parameters. We find that Jacobi captures are a complex and chaotic phenomenon that occurs in about 13% of cases in this simplified setup, and we quantify how the likelihood of capture depends on the simulation parameters. We note that this percentage is likely an upper limit of the general case. Nevertheless, we show that Jacobi captures in cored dwarf galaxies can facilitate the formation of off-center black hole binaries, and that this process is sufficiently common to have a substantial effect on black hole growth. While our setup only allows for temporary captures, we expect dissipative forces from baryons and post-Newtonian corrections to maintain the captures over time and to lead to the formation of stable binary systems. This motivates future studies of the effectiveness of such dissipative forces, within stripped nuclei or globular clusters, in forming stable bound systems.