Busting Up Binaries: Encounters Between Compact Binaries and a
  Supermassive Black Hole
  Given the stellar density near the galactic center, close encounters between
compact object binaries and the supermassive black hole are a plausible
occurrence. We present results from a numerical study of close to 13 million
such encounters. Consistent with previous studies, we corroborate that, for
binary systems tidally disrupted by the black hole, the component of the binary
remaining bound to the hole has eccentricity ~ 0.97 and circularizes
dramatically by the time it enters the classical LISA band. Our results also
show that the population of surviving binaries merits attention. These binary
systems experience perturbations to their internal orbital parameters with
potentially interesting observational consequences. We investigated the regions
of parameter space for survival and estimated the distribution of orbital
parameters post-encounter. We found that surviving binaries harden and their
eccentricity increases, thus accelerating their merger due gravitational
radiation emission and increasing the predicted merger rates by up to 1%.
