Self-gravitating Disks Around Rapidly Spinning, Tilted Black Holes: General Relativistic Simulations

Antonios Tsokaros, Milton Ruiz, Stuart L. Shapiro, and Vasileios Paschalidis

Date: 9 Sep 2022    arXiv:2209.04454

Abstract

We perform general relativistic simulations of self-gravitating black hole-disks in which the spin of the black hole is significantly tilted ($45^\circ$ and $90^\circ$) with respect to the angular momentum of the disk and the disk-to-black hole mass ratio is $16\%-28\%$. The black holes are rapidly spinning with dimensionless spins up to $\sim 0.97$. These are the first self-consistent hydrodynamic simulations of such systems, which can be prime sources for multimessenger astronomy. In particular tilted black hole-disk systems lead to: i) black hole precession; ii) disk precession and warping around the black hole; iii) earlier saturation of the Papaloizou-Pringle instability compared to aligned/antialigned systems, although with a shorter mode growth timescale; iv) acquisition of a small black-hole kick velocity; v) significant gravitational wave emission via various modes beyond, but as strong as, the typical $(2,2)$ mode; and vi) the possibility of a broad alignment of the angular momentum of the disk with the black hole spin. This alignment is not related to the Bardeen-Petterson effect and resembles a solid body rotation. Our simulations suggest that any electromagnetic luminosity from our models may power relativistic jets, such as those characterizing short gamma-ray bursts. Depending on the black hole-disk system scale the gravitational waves may be detected by LIGO/Virgo, LISA and/or other laser interferometers.



Movies
Nawaf Aldrees, Jonah Doppelt, Mit Kotak, Milton Ruiz, Stuart L. Shapiro, Antonios Tsokaros, Eric Yu, and Jing Zhou



Model A1: 00° initial tilt (Zoomout View)



Model A1: 00° initial tilt (Zoomin View)



Model A2: 45° initial tilt (Zoomout View)



Model A2: 45° initial tilt (Zoomin View)



Model A2: 45° initial tilt, h+ Polarization (Contour Plot of Equatorial Plane with Rendering of the Source)



Model A2: 45° initial tilt, h+ Polarization (Contour Plot of Equatorial Plane with 1D Plot)



Model A3: 90° initial tilt (Zoomout View)



Model A3: 90° initial tilt (Zoomin View)



Model A3: 90° initial tilt, h+ Polarization (Contour Plot of Equatorial Plane with Rendering of the Source)



Model A3: 90° initial tilt, h+ Polarization (Contour Plot of Equatorial Plane with 1D Plot)



Model A4: 180° initial tilt (Zoomout View)



Model A4: 180° initial tilt (Zoomin View)