Black hole mergers as tracers of spinning massive black hole and galaxy populations in the OBELISK simulation

Abstract

Massive black hole (BH) mergers will be key targets of future gravitational wave and electromagnetic observational facilities. In order to constrain BH evolution with the information extracted from BH mergers, one must take into account the complex relationship between the population of merging BHs and the global BH population. We analysed the high-resolution cosmological radiation-hydrodynamics simulation OBELISK, run to redshift z = 3.5, to study the properties of the merging BH population, and its differences with the underlying global BH population in terms of BH and galaxy properties. In post-processing, we calculated dynamical delays between the merger in the simulation at the resolution limit and the actual coalescence well below the resolution scale. We find that merging BHs are hosted in relatively massive galaxies with stellar mass M* ≳ 109 M⊙. Given that galaxy mass is correlated with other BH and galaxy properties, BH mergers tend to also have a higher total BH mass and higher BH accretion rates than the global population of main BHs. These differences generally disappear if the merger population is compared with a BH population sampled with the same galaxy mass distribution as merger hosts. Galaxy mergers can temporarily boost the BH accretion rate and the host’s star formation rate, which can remain active at the BH merger if sub-resolution delays are not taken into account. When dynamical delays are taken into account, the burst has generally faded by the time the BHs merge. BH spins are followed self-consistently in the simulation under the effect of accretion and BH mergers. We find that merging BHs have higher spins than the global population, but similar or somewhat lower spins compared to a mass-matched sample. For our sample, mergers tend to decrease the spin of the final BH remnant.