Paper: astro-ph/0511391
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 12:54:20 GMT (361kb)

Title: Evolution of Massive Blackhole Triples I -- Equal-mass binary-single
systems

Authors: Masaki Iwasawa, Yoko Funato and Junichiro Makino

Comments: 20 pages, 12 figures
\\
We present the result of $N$-body simulations of dynamical evolution of
triple massive blackhole (BH) systems in galactic nuclei. We found that in most
cases two of the three BHs merge through gravitational wave (GW) radiation in
the timescale much shorter than the Hubble time, before ejecting one BH through
a slingshot. In order for a binary BH to merge before ejecting out the third
one, it has to become highly eccentric since the gravitational wave timescale
would be much longer than the Hubble time unless the eccentricity is very high.
We found that two mechanisms drive the increase of the eccentricity of the
binary. One is the strong binary-single BH interaction resulting in the
thermalization of the eccentricity. The second is the Kozai mechanism which
drives the cyclic change of the inclination and eccentricity of the inner
binary of a stable hierarchical triple system. Our result implies that many of
supermassive blackholes are binaries.

\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0511391 , 361kb)