The Fate of Supermassive Black Holes and the Evolution of the MBH-σ Relation in Merging Galaxies: The Effect of Gaseous Dissipation

We analyze the effect of dissipation on the orbital evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) using high-resolution self-consistent gasdynamical simulations of binary equal- and unequal-mass mergers of disk galaxies. The galaxy models are consistent with the ΛCDM paradigm of structure formation, and the simulations include the effects of radiative cooling and star formation. We find that equal-mass mergers always lead to the formation of a …