Gas dynamical friction as a binary formation mechanism in AGN discs
First author: Stanislav DeLaurentiis
In this paper, we study how gaseous dynamical friction (DF) affects the motion of fly-by stellar-mass black holes (sBHs) embedded in active galactic nucleus (AGN) discs. We perform 3-body integrations of the interaction of two co-planar sBHs in nearby, initially circular orbits around the supermassive black hole (SMBH). We find that DF can facilitate the formation of gravitationally bound near-Keplerian binaries in AGN discs, and we delineate the discrete ranges of impact parameters and AGN disc parameters for which such captures occur.