The complex evolution of supermassive black holes in cosmological simulations
Abstract
Simulations of massive galaxy formation using the KETJU code accurately model supermassive black hole dynamics and astrophysical processes, revealing high eccentricity SMBH binaries.
We present here self-consistent zoom-in simulations of massive galaxies forming in a full cosmological setting. The simulations are run with an updated version of the KETJU code, which is able to resolve the gravitational dynamics of their supermassive black holes, while simultaneously modelling the large-scale astrophysical processes in the surrounding galaxies, such as gas cooling, star formation and stellar and AGN feedback. The KETJU code is able to accurately model the complex behaviour of multiple SMBHs, including dynamical friction, stellar scattering and gravitational wave emission, and also to resolve Lidov-Kozai oscillations that naturally occur in hierarchical triplet SMBH systems. In general most of the SMBH binaries form at moderately high eccentricities, with typical values in the range of e =0.6-0.95, meaning that the circular binary models that are commonly used in the literature are insufficient for capturing the typical binary evolution.
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