Issue |
A&A
Volume 687, July 2024
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | L18 | |
Number of page(s) | 13 | |
Section | Letters to the Editor | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202450141 | |
Published online | 16 July 2024 |
Letter to the Editor
Dynamical evolution timescales for the triple supermassive black hole system in NGC 6240
1
Main Astronomical Observatory, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, 27 Akademika Zabolotnoho St, 03143 Kyiv, Ukraine
e-mail: berczik@mao.kiev.ua
2
Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Centre Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Bartycka 18, 00-716 Warsaw, Poland
3
Konkoly Observatory, Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, HUN-REN CSFK, MTA Centre of Excellence, Konkoly Thege Miklós út 15-17, 1121 Budapest, Hungary
4
Fesenkov Astrophysical Institute, Observatory 23, 050020 Almaty, Kazakhstan
Received:
27
March
2024
Accepted:
25
June
2024
Aims. Based on the available observational data from the literature, we analysed the dynamics of the NGC 6240 galaxy central supermassive black hole (SMBH) system.
Methods. For the dynamical modelling of this triple SBMH system, we used the massively parallel and GPU accelerated φ-GPU direct summation N-body code. Following a long-timescale modelling of the triple system, we carried out a very detailed time output analysis of the von Zeipel–Lidov–Kozai (ZLK) oscillations for the black holes.
Results. According to our Newtonian simulation results, for all models and randomisations, the bound system from S1+S2 components formed at ≈3.6 Myr. The formation of the bound hierarchical triple system S+N occurred at ≈18 Myr. Over the course of these Newtonian simulations of the evolution of the triple SMBH system and the surrounding environment in NGC 6240, ZLK oscillations were detected (in most cases) for the binary components. The inclination angle between the orbital angular momentum of binary components aptly coincides with the theoretical calculations of the ZLK mechanism.
Conclusions. In our set of randomised 15 Newtonian N-body dynamical galaxy models in 13 systems, we were able to detect a ZLK mechanism. In contrast, our extra few-body post-Newtonian runs (for one randomisation case) show it is only for the large inner binary initial eccentricity (in our case ≳0.9) that we are able to observe the possibility of the inner binary merging, due to the post-Newtonian energy radiation effects. For the lower eccentricity cases, the test runs show no sign of possible merging or any ZLK oscillations in the system.
Key words: black hole physics / methods: numerical / galaxies: interactions / galaxies: individual: NGC 6240 / galaxies: kinematics and dynamics / galaxies: nuclei
© The Authors 2024
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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