Disks Around Merging Binary Black Holes: From GW150914 to Supermassive Black Holes

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We perform magnetohydrodynamic simulations in full general relativity of disk accretion onto nonspinning black hole binaries with mass ratio 36:29.

• We survey different disk models which differ in their scale height, total size and magnetic field to quantify the robustness of previous simulations on the initial disk model.
• Scaling our simulations to LIGO GW150914 we find that such systems could explain possible gravitational wave and electromagnetic counterparts such as the Fermi GBM hard X-ray signal reported 0.4s after GW150915 ended.
• Scaling our simulations to supermassive binary black holes, we find that observable flow properties such as accretion rate periodicities, the emergence of jets throughout inspiral, merger and post-merger, disk temperatures, thermal frequencies, and the time-delay between merger and the boost in jet outflows that we reported in earlier studies display only modest dependence on the initial disk model we consider here.