From Inspiral to Expansion: The Wake-Driven Torque on Binary Black Holes in Gaseous Medium

[2608.27970] From Inspiral to Expansion: The Wake-Driven Torque on Binary Black Holes in Gaseous Medium Skip to main content Search Submit Donate Log in Astrophysics > High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena arXiv:2608.27970 (astro-ph) [Submitted on 28 Aug 2026] Title: From Inspiral to Expansion: The Wake-Driven Torque on Binary Black Holes in Gaseous Medium Authors: Jixuan Yang , Lile Wang , Xinyu Li , Rixin Li View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract: Binary black holes (BBHs) in gaseous medium, such as active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks, are important gravitational-wave sources, yet the gas-driven torque that governs their orbital evolution remains to be fully understood. Most existing studies of BBHs in gas often approximate the net torque as the sum of independent dynamical friction (DF) forces exerted on each black hole by its own wake, neglecting the mutual gravitational coupling between the two wakes. We perform three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of circular BBHs in a uniform flow and find the torque is determined by the wake-wake interactions. The net torque is controlled by a single parameter $\eta \equiv v_g/v_o$, the ratio of the gas flow velocity to the binary orbital velocity. At small $\eta$, the wakes merge into a single overdense envelope and the time-averaged torque is negative; as $\eta$ increases, the wakes separate and the torque becomes positive. In AGN disks, capture-channel binaries in a disk model naturally produce $\eta$ in the positive-torque regime; the expansion timescale is comparable to or shorter than the disk lifetime, suggesting that gas-driven expansion can compete with gravitational-wave inspiral and suppress the capture-channel merger rate. Subjects: High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) ; Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) Cite as: arXiv:2608.27970 [astro-ph.HE] (or arXiv:2608.27970v1 [astro-ph.HE] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.27970 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Jixuan Yang [ view email ] [v1] Fri, 28 Aug 2026 06:34:35 UTC (2,370 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View PDF HTML (experimental) TeX Source view license Additional Features Audio Summary Current browse context: astro-ph.HE < prev | next > new | recent | 2026-08 Change to browse by: astro-ph astro-ph.GA References & Citations INSPIRE HEP SciX Google Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer ( What is the Explorer? ) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers ( What is Connected Papers? ) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps ( What is Litmaps? ) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations ( What are Smart Citations? ) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv ( What is alphaXiv? ) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers ( What is CatalyzeX? ) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub ( What is DagsHub? ) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub ( What is GotitPub? ) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face ( What is Huggingface? ) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast ( What is ScienceCast? ) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate ( What is Replicate? ) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces ( What is Spaces? ) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI ( What is TXYZ.AI? ) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower ( What are Influence Flowers? ) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender ( What is CORE? ) IArxiv recommender toggle IArxiv Recommender ( What is IArxiv? ) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs . Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax ( What is MathJax? ) We gratefully acknowledge support from our major funders , member institutions , and all contributors. About · Help · Contact · Subscribe · Copyright · Privacy · Accessibility · Operational Status (opens in new tab)

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