Busting Up Binaries: Encounters Between Compact Binaries and a Supermassive Black Hole

Understand

Given the stellar density near the galactic center, close encounters between compact object binaries and the supermassive black hole are a plausible occurrence.

• We present results from a numerical study of close to 13 million such encounters.
• Consistent with previous studies, we corroborate that, for binary systems tidally disrupted by the black hole, the component of the binary remaining bound to the hole has eccentricity ~ 0.97 and circularizes dramatically by the time it enters the classical LISA band.
• Our results also show that the population of surviving binaries merits attention.