Morphological evolution of supermassive black hole merger hosts and multimessenger signatures
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: ABSTRACT With projects such as Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) and Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) expected to detect gravitational waves from supermassive black hole mergers in the near future, it is key that we understand what we expect those detections to be, and maximize what we can learn from them. To address this, we study the mergers of supermassive black holes in the Illustris simulation, the overall rate of mergers, and the correlation between merging black holes and their host galaxies. We find these mergers occur in typical galaxies along the MBH−M* relation, and that between LISA and PTAs we expect to probe the full range of galaxy masses. As galaxy mergers can trigger star formation, we find that galaxies hosting low-mass black hole mergers tend to show a slight increase in star formation rates compared to a mass-matched sample. However, high-mass merger hosts have typical star formation rates, due to a combination of low gas fractions and powerful active galactic nucleus feedback. Although minor black hole mergers do not correlate with disturbed morphologies, major mergers (especially at high-masses) tend to show morphological evidence of recent galaxy mergers which survive for ∼500 Myr. This is on the same scale as the infall/hardening time of merging black holes, suggesting that electromagnetic follow-ups to gravitational wave signals may not be able to observe this correlation. We further find that incorporating a realistic time-scale delay for the black hole mergers could shift the merger distribution towards higher masses, decreasing the rate of LISA detections while increasing the rate of PTA detections.
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,247
Funders: National Science Foundation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, UK Government, University of Cambridge, Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe AISBL, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, H2020 European Research Council
Awards: G1644213021, DiRAC-2.5 - the pathway to DiRAC Phase 3, G1854719645, G1945644245, G2036796728, G2050507125, G2085766551, G215948905, DiRAC-3 Operations 2019-2022 - Edinburgh, The First Billion Years: a Petascale Universe of Galaxies and Quasars, G2689075568, G3120427512, INTENSITY MAPPING (IM) IS THE USE OF ONE OR MORE EMISSION LINES TO TRACE OUT THE STRUCTURE OF THE UNIVERSE WITHOUT NEEDING TO RESOLVE INDIVIDUAL OBJECTS (SUCH AS GALAXIES OR GAS CLOUDS). IT IS ONE OF THE MOST PROMISING WAYS TO RADICALLY EXTEND THE SKY SURVEY REVOLUTION IN COSMOLOGY. BY MAKING SPECTRA OF THE ENTIRE SKY RATHER THAN THE ONE PART IN ONE MILLION CAPTURED BY CURRENT FIBER SPECTROGRAPHS ONE WOULD BE SENSITIVE TO ALL STRUCTURE. THERE ARE POTENTIALLY HUGE DISCOVERIES TO BE MADE IN THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE SKY THAT IS CURRENTLY SPECTRALLY UNMAPPED AND ALSO GREAT GAINS IN SIGNAL TO NOISE OF COSMOLOGICAL CLUSTERING MEASUREMENTS. INTENSITY MAPPING WITH THE 21CM RADIO LINE HAS BEEN EXPLORED THEORETICALLY BY MANY AND INSTRUMENTS ARE BEING BUILT PARTICULARLY TARGETING THE EPOCH OF REIONIZATION. IN THE UV VISIBLE AND INFRARED HOWEVER OTHER LINES HAVE ENORMOUS PROMISE AND WILL BE EXPLOITED BY A RANGE OF FUTURE NASA MISSIONS INCLUDING WFIRST EUCLID AND THE PROPOSED SPHEREX INSTRUMENT A DEDICATED INTENSITY MAPPING SATELLITE.THE FIRST MEASUREMENT OF LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE OUTSIDE THE RADIO (USING LYMAN-ALPHA EMISSION) WAS RECENTLY MADE BY THE PI AND COLLABORATORS. THE LY-A ABSORPTION LINE ALSO TRACES A CONTINUOUS COSMOLOGICAL FIELD THE LYMAN-ALPHA FOREST AND THE ENORMOUS RECENT INCREASE IN THE NUMBER OF OBSERVED QUASAR SPECTRA HAVE MADE IT POSSIBLE TO INTERPOLATE BETWEEN QUASAR SIGHTLINES TO CREATE THREE DIMENSIONAL MAPS. BEING ABLE TO TRACE THE SAME COSMIC STRUCTURE IN EMISSION AND ABSORPTION OFFERS HUGE ADVANTAGES WHEN WE SEEK TOUNDERSTAND THE PROCESSES INVOLVED. IT WILL HELP US MAKE COMPREHENSIVE MAPS OF THE UNIVERSE'S CONTENTS AND OFFER US THE OPPORTUNITY TO CREATE NEW POWERFUL COSMOLOGICAL TESTS.IN OUR PROPOSED WORK WE WILL EXPLORE THE POSSIBILITIES AFFORDED BY TAKING GRISM AND INTEGRAL FIELD SPECTRA OF LARGE VOLUMES OF THE UNIVERSE USING STATE-OF-THE-ART COSMOLOGICAL HYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS. WE WILL MAKE USE OF ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES DEVELOPED FOR THE LYMAN-ALPHA FOREST AS WELL AS FOREST DATA ITSELF TO TEST THEM. OUR AIM IS TO DEVELOP INTENSITY MAPPING AS A COSMOLOGICAL TOOL AND SHOWHOW IT CAN BE USED TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CONTENTS OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE FORMATION OF STRUCTURE THAT ARE NOT ACCESSIBLE TO TRADITIONAL TECHNIQUES. THE PROJECT WILL INVOLVE BOTH DIRECT SAMPLING OF COSMIC STRUCTURE AND CROSS-CORRELATIONS OF LINE INTENSITY AND OBJECTS (INCLUDING GALAXIES QUASARS AND ABSORPTION LINES). EMISSION (E.G. H-ALPHA EMISSION) AND ABSORPTION (LY ALPHA FOREST) WILLBE VIEWED AS CONTINUOUS FIELDS. USING LARGE VOLUME COSMOLOGICAL SIMULATIONS COMBINED WITH POPULATION SYNTHESIS TECHNIQUES WE WILL MAKE SIMULATED SPECTRAL DATA SETS. THE TECHNIQUES TO ANALYZE THESE COSMOLOGICAL DATA CUBES WILL BE DEVELOPED. THE EXPECTED OUTCOMESARE THE FOLLOWING:(A) PREDICTIONS FOR THE LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE OF STRONG EMISSION LINES (INCLUDING HA HB LYA OII OIII) IN THE UNIVERSE USING HYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS INCLUDING THE CONTRIBUTION FROM ALL COMPONENTS FROM QUASARS TO DIFFUSE EMSSION.(B) SIMULATIONS OF REALISTIC EXAMPLES OF THE USE OF IM AS A COSMOLOGICAL PROBE} INCLUDING BARYON OSCILLATIONS AND WEAK GRAVITATIONAL LENSING.(C) TESTS OF TECHNIQUES TO DETECTION AND QUANTIFY THE LOW SURFACE BRIGHTNESS UNIVERSE LEADING TO A COMPLETE CENSUS OF THE COSMIC INTENSITY IN SPECIFIC LINES SUCH AS OII AND HA.(D) DEVELOPMENT OF TECHNIQUES TO EXTRACT REDSHIFTS FOR INDIVIDUAL GALAXIES FROM LOW ANGULAR RESOLUTION IM SPECTROSCOPY.(E) MOCK CATALOGS FOR SPHEREX EUCLID AND WFIRST SPECTROSCOPY OF DIFFUSE EMISSION AS WELL AS FOR THE GALEX GRISM SURVEY AND TESTS OF ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES ON DATA FROM THE LATTER., The DiRAC 2.5x Facility, Consolidated Grant Astronomy Observation and Theory 2019-2022, G3682537941, DiRAC-2 Datacentric support grant, DiRAC SMP Facility: The Structure of the Universe, DiRAC 2.5 Operations 2017-2020, Black holes and their host galaxies: coevolution across cosmic time, Astronomy Observation and Theory Consolidated Grant 2016-2019, DiRAC 3 Operations, DiRAC 2.5 - the pathway to DiRAC Phase 3, DiRAC-2: Recurrent Costs for Complexity@DiRAC Cluster at University of Leicester, DiRAC-2.5 DC - Operations 2017-2020, Dirac-3 Operations 2019-2022- Durham, Resources for DiRAC2 at HPCs, Dirac 2.5 Operations, DiRAC2.5 Operations: The DiRAC Project Office 2017-2020, DiRAC 2.5y Bridging Funding - UCL, Edinburgh DiRAC Resource Grant, G7937591081, DiRAC Bridging Grant 2019, Software development support for DiRAC, Quasars and Large Scale Structure: Gigaparsec-scale simulations confront Large Survey Data, DiRAC 2.5 Operations 2017-2020
OpenAlex ID: W3108577772