Three-Body Dynamics with Gravitational Wave Emission

We present numerical three-body experiments that include the effects of gravitational radiation reaction by using equations of motion that include the 2.5-order post-Newtonian force terms, which are the leading-order terms of energy loss from gravitational waves. We simulate binary-single interactions and show that close-approach cross sections for three 1 M☉ objects are unchanged from the purely Newtonian dynamics except for close approaches smaller than 10-5 times the initial semimajor axis of the binary. We also present cross sections for mergers resulting from gravitational radiation during three-body encounters for a range of binary semimajor axes and mass ratios including those of interest for intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs). Building on previous work, we simulate sequences of high-mass-ratio three-body encounters that include the effects of gravitational radiation. The simulations show that the binaries merge with extremely high eccentricity such that when the gravitational waves are detectable by LISA, most of the binaries will have eccentricities e > 0.9, although all will have circularized by the time they are detectable by LIGO. We also investigate the implications for the formation and growth of IMBHs and find that the inclusion of gravitational waves during the encounter results in roughly half as many black holes ejected from the host cluster for each black hole accreted onto the growing IMBH.