Preparing Ingredients for Black Hole Mergers: Fate of Binary Black Holes Traveling through Gaseous Media at Different Inclinations

LIGO has been detecting gravitational wave emission from stellar-mass black hole binary (BBH) mergers since the first groundbreaking event in 2015. However, these BBHs are initially too far apart to merge within the age of the Universe without the aid of other physical processes. In previous work, the BBH interaction with the surrounding gaseous medium saved the day: the gas exerts torques on the binary, bringing BBHs to separations such that gravitational waves can drive the subsequent merger. However, the previous work considered a fixed inclination of the angular momentum with respect to the linear momentum of the binary, while BBHs often do not have a preferred inclination. To get a complete picture of BBHs interacting with the surrounding gas, I performed a suite of hydrodynamical simulations, across which I varied the relative inclination. In my talk, I will discuss how different inclinations affect the binary evolution and whether the gas torques still lead to the binary inspiral.