Scientists confirm a highly eccentric black hole merger for the first time

 

For the first time, astronomers believe they have detected a merger of two black holes with strange orbits. According to a research published in Nature Astronomy by scientists from Rochester Institute of Technology's Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation and the University of Florida, this can help describe how some of the black hole mergers detected by LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration are much heavier than previously assumed possible.

 

Eccentric orbits are a sign that black holes could be constantly gobbling up others during chance encounters in areas densely populated with black holes for instance galactic nuclei. The researchers studied the most massive gravitational wave binary observed to date, GW190521, to conclude if the merger had eccentric orbits.

 

"The predicted masses of the black holes are more than 70 times the size of our sun each, placing them well above the estimated maximum mass expected currently by stellar evolution theory," said Carlos Lousto, a professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences and a member of the CCRG. "This makes an exciting case to study as a second generation binary black hole system and opens up to new opportunities of formation scenarios of black holes in dense star clusters."

 

A team of RIT scientists including Lousto, Research Associate James Healy, Jacob Lange, Ph.D. (astrophysical sciences and technology), Professor and CCRG Director Manuela Campanelli, Associate Professor Richard O'Shaughnessy, and collaborators from the University of Florida formed to give a fresh look at the information to see if the black holes had highly eccentric orbits before they merged. They found the merger is best described by a high-eccentricity, precessing model. To accomplish this, scientists performed hundreds of new full numerical simulations in local and national lab supercomputers, taking nearly a year to complete.

 

"This is a major development in our understanding of how black holes merge," said Campanelli. "Through our sophisticated supercomputer simulations and the fortune of new data provided by LIGO and Virgo's rapidly advancing detectors, we are making new detections about the universe at astounding rates."

 

 

References:

Astrophysical Journal, Phy.org