{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/binary-agn-simulations-with-radiation","title":"Binary AGN simulations with radiation pressure reveal a new duty cycle, and a reduction of gravitational torque, through 'minitori' structures","arxiv_id":"2201.00859","date":"2022-01-03","proceeding":null,"authors":["David J. Williamson","Lars H. Bösch","Sebastian F. Hönig"],"abstract":"We produce the first set of radiation hydrodynamics simulations of binary AGNs at parsec-scale separation in scale-model simulations. We use SPH for hydrodynamics, and raytracing to calculate optical depths and radiation pressure from the two AGNs. We confirm that, without radiation pressure, the sign of gravitational torque is sensitive to the binary parameters, although in one of our two orbital configurations the binary should coalesce in a time-scale of $<10^9$ yr. However, radiation pressure quickly destroys the 'minitori' around each SMBH, drastically reducing gravitational torques and accretion, and greatly increasing the coalescence time-scale. Our simulations suggest a new 'minitorus' duty cycle with a time-scale of ~10 binary periods (~$10^6$ yr when scaling our models to a total binary mass of $2\\times10^7\\,M_\\odot$). The growth and blow-out phases of the 'minitori' are of similar time-scales, and thus we expect about half of observed binary SMBHs to be active, in at least one component. The 'minitorus' structure provides asymmetries that could be observed by infrared interferometry.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.00859v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.00859v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"links_only","authors_date_abstract":"arXiv metadata, CC0 1.0 (https://info.arxiv.org/help/license), from the Kaggle arXiv metadata snapshot of 2026-09-12"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"binary-agn-simulations-with-radiation","repo_url":"https://github.com/astrokiwi/binary_torque_small","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}