Minidisk Accretion onto Spinning Black Hole Binaries: Quasi-periodicities and Outflows

We perform a full 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamical (GRMHD) simulation of an equal-mass, spinning, binary black hole approaching merger, surrounded by a circumbinary disk and with a minidisk around each black hole. For this purpose, we evolve the ideal GRMHD equations on top of an approximated spacetime for the binary that is valid in every position of space, including the black hole horizons, during the inspiral regime. We use relaxed initial data for the circumbinary disk from a previous long-term simulation, where the accretion is dominated by a m = 1 overdensity called the lump. We compare our new spinning simulation with a previous non-spinning run, studying how spin influences the minidisk properties. We analyze the accretion from the inner edge of the lump to the black hole, focusing on the angular momentum budget of the fluid around the minidisks. We find that minidisks in the spinning case have more mass over a cycle than the non-spinning case. However, in both cases we find that most of the mass received by the black holes is delivered by the direct plunging of material from the lump. We also analyze the morphology and variability of the electromagnetic fluxes, and we find they share the same periodicities of the accretion rate. In the spinning case, we find that the outflows are stronger than the non-spinning case. Our results will be useful to understand and produce realistic synthetic light curves and spectra, which can be used in future observations.

Automated summary

In this study, we performed a full 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamical simulation of an equal-mass, spinning, binary black hole system approaching merger. We found that spin influences the properties of the minidisks, with spinning minidisks having more mass over a cycle compared to non-spinning minidisks. However, in both cases, most of the mass received by the black holes is delivered by the direct plunging of material from the lump. We also analyzed the morphology and variability of the electromagnetic fluxes and found that they share the same periodicities as the accretion rate. The outflows were found to be stronger in the spinning case. These results are important for understanding and producing realistic synthetic light curves and spectra for future observations.