On the orbital evolution of supermassive black hole binaries with circumbinary accretion discs

Understand

Gaseous circumbinary accretion discs provide a promising mechanism to facilitate the mergers of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei.

• We measure the torques exerted on accreting SMBH binaries, using 2D, isothermal, moving-mesh, viscous hydrodynamical simulations of circumbinary accretion discs.
• Our computational domain includes the entire inner region of the circumbinary disk with the individual black holes (BHs) included as point masses on the grid and a sink prescription to model accretion onto each BH.
• The BHs each acquire their own well-resolved accretion discs ("minidiscs").