TY - JOUR
T1 - Boosting the growth of intermediate-mass black holes
T2 - Collisions with massive stars
AU - Baumgarte, Thomas W.
AU - Shapiro, Stuart L.
N1 - It is a pleasure to thank Peter Diener for helpful discussions. This work was supported in parts by National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant No. PHY-2308821 to Bowdoin College, as well as NSF Grants No. PHY-2006066 and No. PHY-2308242 to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Numerical simulations were performed on the Bowdoin Computational Grid.
PY - 2025/3/15
Y1 - 2025/3/15
N2 - We perform fully relativistic simulations of the head-on collisions between intermediate-mass black holes and very massive stars. Such collisions are expected to occur in dense stellar clusters and may play an important role in growing the mass of the seed black hole. For the cases considered here, for which the masses of the black holes and stars are comparable, the vast majority of the stellar material is accreted onto the black hole within a stellar dynamical timescale, as expected from analytical estimates, and leads to a rapid growth of the black hole. A small amount of mass, which is shock-heated in the wake of the black hole, is ejected from the collision and will contribute to the interstellar material in the cluster.
AB - We perform fully relativistic simulations of the head-on collisions between intermediate-mass black holes and very massive stars. Such collisions are expected to occur in dense stellar clusters and may play an important role in growing the mass of the seed black hole. For the cases considered here, for which the masses of the black holes and stars are comparable, the vast majority of the stellar material is accreted onto the black hole within a stellar dynamical timescale, as expected from analytical estimates, and leads to a rapid growth of the black hole. A small amount of mass, which is shock-heated in the wake of the black hole, is ejected from the collision and will contribute to the interstellar material in the cluster.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevD.111.063039
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevD.111.063039
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:105000366186
SN - 2470-0010
VL - 111
JO - Physical Review D
JF - Physical Review D
IS - 6
M1 - 063039
ER -