Rotational Brownian Motion of a Massive Binary
- 1 April 2002
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Astronomical Society in The Astrophysical Journal
- Vol. 568 (2) , 998-1003
- https://doi.org/10.1086/339035
Abstract
The orientation of a massive binary undergoes a random walk due to gravitational encounters with field stars. The rotational diffusion coefficient for a circular-orbit binary is derived via scattering experiments. The binary is shown to reorient itself by an angle of the order of 1/2 during the time that its semimajor axis shrinks appreciably, where M is the binary mass and m the perturber mass. Implications for the orientations of rotating black holes are discussed.Keywords
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