Tidal disruptions in circumbinary disks - I. Star formation, dynamics, and binary evolution

In our current interpretation of the hierarchical structure of the universe, it is well established that galaxies collide and merge with each other during their lifetimes. If massive black holes (MBHs) reside in galactic centers, we expect them to form binaries in galactic nuclei surrounded by a circumbinary disk. If cooling is efficient enough, the gas in the disk will clump and trigger stellar formation in situ. In this first paper we address the evolution of the binary under the influence of the newly formed stars, which form individually and also clustered. We use smoothed particle hydrodynamics techniques to evolve the gas in the circumbinary disk and to study the phase of star formation. When the amount of gas in the disk is negligible, we further evolve the system with a high-accurate direct-summation N-body code to follow the evolution of the stars, the innermost binary and tidal disruption events (TDEs). For this, we modify the direct N-body code to include (1) treatment of TDEs and (2) "gas cloud particles" that mimic the gas, so that the stellar clusters do not dissolve when we follow their infall on to the MBHs. We find that the amount of stars disrupted by either infalling stellar clusters or individual stars is as large as 10–4 yr–1 per binary, higher than expected for typical galaxies.