arXiv subjects

Peter Berczik

Publications and source records attributed to Peter Berczik.

88 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Fast coalescence of massive black hole binaries from mergers of galactic nuclei: implications for low-frequency gravitational-wave astrophysics

We investigate a purely stellar dynamical solution to the Final Parsec Problem. Galactic nuclei resulting from major mergers are not spherical, but show some degree of triaxiality. With $N$-body simulations, we show that massive black hole binaries (MBHB) hosted by them will continuously interact with stars on centrophilic orbits and will thus inspiral---in much less than a Hubble time---down to separations at which gravitational wave (GW) emission is strong enough to drive them to coalescence. Such coalescences will be important sources of GWs for future space-borne detectors such as the {\it Laser Interferometer Space Antenna} (LISA). Based on our results, we expect that LISA will see between $\sim 10$ to $\sim {\rm few} \times 10^2$ such events every year, depending on the particular MBH seed model as obtained in recent studies of merger trees of galaxy and MBH co-evolution. Orbital eccentricities in the LISA band will be clearly distinguishable from zero with $e \gtrsim 0.001-0.01$.

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arXiv2008

Binary Black Hole Merger in Galactic Nuclei: Post-Newtonian Simulations

This paper studies the formation and evolution of binary supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in rotating galactic nuclei, focusing on the role of stellar dynamics. We present the first N-body simulations that follow the evolution of the SMBHs from kiloparsec separations all the way to their final relativistic coalescence, and that can robustly be scaled to real galaxies. The N-body code includes post-Newtonian (PN) corrections to the binary equations of motion up to order 2.5; we show that the evolution of the massive binary is only correctly reproduced if the conservative 1PN and 2PN terms are included. The orbital eccentricities of the massive binaries in our simulations are often found to remain large until shortly before coalescence. This directly affects not only their orbital evolution rates, but has important consequences as well for the gravitational waveforms emitted during the relativistic inspiral. We estimate gravitational wave amplitudes when the frequencies fall inside the band of the (planned) Laser Interferometer Space Antennae (LISA). We find significant contributions -- well above the LISA sensitivity curve -- from the higher-order harmonics.

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arXiv2008

Merger of Massive Black Holes using N-Body Simulations with Post-Newtonian Corrections

We present preliminary results from self-consistent, high resolution direct {\it N}-body simulations of massive black hole binaries in mergers of galactic nuclei. The dynamics of the black hole binary includes the full Post-Newtonian corrections (up to 2.5PN) to its equations of motion. We show that massive black holes starting at separations of 100 pc can evolve down to gravitational-wave-induced coalescence in less than a Hubble time. The binaries, in our models, often form with very high eccentricity and, as a result, reach separations of 50 Schwarzschild radius with eccentricities which are clearly distinct from zero -- even though gravitational wave emission damps the eccentricity during the inspiral. These deviations from exact circular orbits, at such small separations, may have important consequences for LISA data analysis.

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arXiv2006

Brownian Motion of Black Holes in Dense Nuclei

We evaluate the Brownian motion of a massive particle ("black hole") at the center of a galaxy using N-body simulations. Our galaxy models have power-law central density cusps like those observed at the centers of elliptical galaxies. The simulations show that the black hole achieves a steady-state kinetic energy that is substantially different than would be predicted based on the properties of the galaxy model in the absence of the black hole. The reason appears to be that the black hole responds to stars whose velocities have themselves been raised by the presence of the black hole. Over a wide range of density slopes and black hole masses, the black hole's mean kinetic energy is equal to what would be predicted under the assumption that it is in energy equipartition with stars lying within a distance ~r_h/2 from it, where r_h is the black hole's influence radius. The dependence of the Brownian velocity on black hole mass is approximately ~ 1/M^{1/(3-gamma)} with gamma the power-law index of the stellar density profile, rho~1/r^gamma. This is less steep than the 1/M dependence predicted in a model where the effect of the black hole on the stellar velocities is ignored. The influence of a stellar mass spectrum on the black hole's Brownian motion is also evaluated and found to be consistent with predictions from Chandrasekhar's theory. We use these results to derive a probability function for the mass of the Milky Way black hole based on a measurement of its proper motion velocity. Interesting constraints on M will require a velocity resolution exceeding 0.5 km/s.

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arXiv2006

Performance Analysis of Direct N-Body Algorithms on Special-Purpose Supercomputers

Direct-summation N-body algorithms compute the gravitational interaction between stars in an exact way and have a computational complexity of O(N^2). Performance can be greatly enhanced via the use of special-purpose accelerator boards like the GRAPE-6A. However the memory of the GRAPE boards is limited. Here, we present a performance analysis of direct N-body codes on two parallel supercomputers that incorporate special-purpose boards, allowing as many as four million particles to be integrated. Both computers employ high-speed, Infiniband interconnects to minimize communication overhead, which can otherwise become significant due to the small number of "active" particles at each time step. We find that the computation time scales well with processor number; for 2*10^6 particles, efficiencies greater than 50% and speeds in excess of 2 TFlops are reached.

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arXiv2006

Efficient Merger of Binary Supermassive Black Holes in Non-Axisymmetric Galaxies

Binary supermassive black holes form naturally in galaxy mergers, but their long-term evolution is uncertain. In spherical galaxies, N-body simulations show that binary evolution stalls at separations much too large for significant emission of gravitational waves (the "final parsec problem"). Here, we follow the long-term evolution of a massive binary in more realistic, triaxial and rotating galaxy models. We find that the binary does not stall. The binary hardening rates that we observe are sufficient to allow complete coalescence of binary SBHs in 10 Gyr or less, even in the absence of collisional loss-cone refilling or gas-dynamical torques, thus providing a potential solution to the final parsec problem.

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arXiv2005

Long-Term Evolution of Massive Black Hole Binaries. II. Binary Evolution in Low-Density Galaxies

We use direct-summation N-body integrations to follow the evolution of binary black holes at the centers of galaxy models with large, constant-density cores. Particle numbers as large as 400K are considered. The results are compared with the predictions of loss-cone theory, under the assumption that the supply of stars to the binary is limited by the rate at which they can be scattered into the binary's influence sphere by gravitational encounters. The agreement between theory and simulation is quite good; in particular, we are able to quantitatively explain the observed dependence of binary hardening rate on N. We do not verify the recent claim of Chatterjee, Hernquist & Loeb (2003) that the hardening rate of the binary stabilizes when N exceeds a particular value, or that Brownian wandering of the binary has a significant effect on its evolution. When scaled to real galaxies, our results suggest that massive black hole binaries in gas-poor nuclei would be unlikely to reach gravitational-wave coalescence in a Hubble time.

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arXiv2001

Analyze of the star formation modeling algorithm in SPH code

The chemical and photometric evolution of star forming disk galaxies is investigated. Numerical simulations of the complex gasdynamical flows are based on our own coding of the Chemo - Dynamical Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamical (CD - SPH) approach, which incorporates the effects of star formation. The presented model describes well the time evolution of the basic dynamical, chemical and photometric parameters of a disk galaxy similar to the Milky Way. The metallicity, luminosity and colors obtained are typical for such disk galaxies. During the calculations we made an extended test of the proposed SF criteria. We find that the obtained results with different "gas" and "star" particle numbers are not only qualitatively but also quantitatively similar.

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arXiv2000

Modeling the star formation in galaxies using the Chemo - dynamical SPH code

A new Chemo - Dynamical Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic (CD - SPH) code is presented. The disk galaxy is described as a multi - fragmented gas and star system, embedded in a cold dark matter halo. The star formation (SF) process, SNII, SNIa and PN events as well as chemical enrichment of gas have been considered within the framework of the standard SPH model. Using this model we describe the dynamical and chemical evolution of triaxial disk - like galaxies. It is found that such approach provides a realistic description of the process of formation, chemical and dynamical evolution of disk galaxies over a cosmological timescale.

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arXiv2000

Dissipative N - body code for galaxy evolution

The evolving galaxy is considered as a system of baryonic fragments embedded into the static dark nonbaryonic (DH) and baryonic (BH) halo and subjected to gravitational and viscous interactions. Although the chemical evolution of each separate fragment is treated in the frame of one -- zone close box model with instantaneous recycling, its star formation (SF) activity is a function of mean local gas density and, therefore, is strongly influenced by other interacting fragments. In spite of its simplicity this model provides a realistic description of the process of galaxy formation and evolution over the Hubble timescale.

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arXiv2000

Chemo - Photometric evolution of star forming disk galaxy

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arXiv1999

A scenario for the formation of dwarf galaxies with an anomally low dark-matter content

The formation and evolution of a low mass galaxy in the gravitational field of a massive disk galaxy (like the Milky Way) has been studied. Numerical simulations of complex gas-dynamic flows are based on our own variant of the Chemo-Dynamical Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamical ({\bf CD-SPH}) approach, which incorporates star formation. The dynamics of the dark matter was treated as a standard N-body problem. It is shown that the satellite galaxy effectively looses its dark matter component due to the strong tidal influence of the massive galaxy, while the gas, owing to its strong dissipative nature, forms an almost dark-matter-free dwarf galaxy.

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arXiv1999

Chemo-Dynamical SPH code for evolution of star forming disk galaxies

A new Chemo-Dynamical Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic (CD-SPH) code is presented. The disk galaxy is described as a multi-fragmented gas and star system, embedded in a cold dark matter halo with a rigid potential field. The star formation (SF) process, SNII, SNIa and PN events, and the chemical enrichment of gas, have all been considered within the framework of the standard SPH model, which we use to describe the dynamical and chemical evolution of triaxial disk-like galaxies. It is found that such approach provides a realistic description of the process of formation, chemical and dynamical evolution of disk galaxies over a cosmological timescale.

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arXiv1998

Chemo -- Dynamical evolution of disk galaxies, smoothed particles hydrodynamics approach

A new Chemo -- Dynamical Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic (CD -- SPH) code is presented. The disk galaxy is described as a multi -- fragmented gas and star system, embedded into the cold dark matter halo. The star formation (SF) process, SNII, SNIa and PN events as well as chemical enrichment of gas have been considered within the framework of standard SPH model. Using this model we try to describe the dynamical and chemical evolution of triaxial disk -- like galaxies. It is found that such approach provides a realistic description of the process of formation, chemical and dynamical evolution of disk galaxies over the cosmological timescale.

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arXiv1998

SPH code for dynamical and chemical evolution of disk galaxies

The problem of chemical and dynamical evolution of galaxies is one of the most attracting and complex problems of modern astrophysics. Within the framework of the given work the standard dynamic Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) code (Monaghan J.J. 1992, ARAA, 30, 543) is noticeably expanded. Our investigation concernes with the changes and incorporation of new ideas into the algorithmic inclusion of Star Formation (SF) and Super Novae (SN) explosions in SPH (Berczik P. & Kravchuk S.G., 1996, ApSpSci, 245, 27). The proposed energy criterion for definition of a place and efficiency of SF results in the successfully explain Star Formation History (SFH) in isolated galaxies of different types. On the base of original ideas we expand a code in a more realistic way of the description of effects of return of a hot, chemical enriched gas in Interstellar Matter (ISM). In addition to the account of SNII, we offer the self-agreed account of SNIa and PN. This allows to describe not only the ISM content of $ O^{16} $ but also the content of $ Fe^{56} $. This model will allow to investigate adequately also a well known $ G - dwarf $ problem. In the frame of this approach we are able to reproduce the presently observed kinematics of star and gaseous components as well as their distributions and heavy element abundances. The developed model provide the realistic description of dynamics and chemical evolution of typical disk -- like galaxies over the Hubble timescale.

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arXiv1998

Galaxy as dissipative N -- body system. Chemical aspect

The evolving galaxy is considered as a system of baryonic fragments embedded into the static dark nonbaryonic (DH) and baryonic (BH) halo and subjected to gravitational and viscous interactions. Though the chemical evolution of each fragment is treated in the frame of one -- zone model with instantaneous recycling, the local gas density and, therefore, its star formation (SF) activity is influenced by other interacting fragments. In spite of its simplicity the model provides a realistic description of the process of galaxy formation and evolution over the Hubble timescale.

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