Hydrodynamic simulations of black hole evolution in AGN discs II: inclination damping for partially embedded satellites

TL;DR

This study uses 3D hydrodynamic simulations to analyze how black holes embedded in AGN discs lose inclination, revealing that gas gravity causes exponential damping especially in low-inclination regimes, impacting binary formation.

Contribution

It provides a new fitting formula for inclination damping as a function of Hill mass and compares gas gravity damping with accretion-driven models, highlighting the dominance of gas gravity effects.

Findings

Inclination damping is exponential for small inclinations.

Damping efficiency decreases for higher inclinations.

Gas dynamical friction overestimates damping compared to simulations.

Abstract

We investigate the evolution of black holes on orbits with small inclinations ($i < 2^\circ$) to the gaseous discs of active galactic nuclei. We perform 3D adiabatic hydrodynamic simulations within a shearing frame, studying the damping of inclination by black hole-gas gravitation. We find that for objects with $i<3H_0R_0^{-1}$, where $H_0R_0^{-1}$ is the disc aspect ratio, the inclination lost per midplane crossing is proportional to the inclination preceding the crossing, resulting in a net exponential decay in inclination. For objects with $i>3H_0R_0^{-1}$, damping efficiency decreases for higher inclinations. We consider a variety of different AGN environments, finding that damping is stronger for systems with a higher ambient Hill mass: the initial gas mass within the BH sphere-of-influence. We provide a fitting formula for the inclination changes as a function of Hill mass. We find reasonable agreement between the damping driven by gas gravity in the simulations and the damping driven by accretion under a Hill-limited Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton prescription. We find that gas dynamical friction consistently overestimates the strength of damping, especially for lower inclination systems, by at least an order of magnitude. For regions in the AGN disc where coplanar binary black hole formation by gas dissipation is efficient, we find that the simulated damping timescales are especially short with $\tau_d < 10P_\mathrm{SMBH}$. We conclude that as the timescales for inclination damping are shorter than the expected interaction time between isolated black holes, the vast majority of binaries formed from gas capture should form from components with negligible inclination to the AGN disc.