2025ApJ...994L..18H

We propose that the high eccentricity of the stellar orbit in the Gaia BH3 system could be excited through a secular resonance effect if the inner dark object is, in effect, a tight and eccentric black hole binary (BHB). During the orbital decay of the inner BHB, the apsidal precession rate of the inner binary matches that of the outer stellar orbit, and this resonance advection can drive the outer eccentricity into some extreme values. For a Gaia BH3-like system, we show that a near equal-mass (q = 0.8) BHB with an initial semimajor axis of 1-3 au and an initial eccentricity ≳0.95 is able to excite the outer orbit to the observed value, leaving a current BHB with a semimajor axis 0.25-0.5 au and eccentricity ∼0.8. The eccentric inner BHB imprints two observable signatures on the outer star: (1) short-term radial velocity (RV) modulations with an amplitude ≲100 m s^–1 and (2) long-term apsidal precession with a rate ≲0$\mathop{.}\limits^{\unicode{x000b0}}$1 yr^–1. Although neither of these is detected in the currently available astrometry and RV data, we show that these signals are detectable with the full Gaia astrometry data and dedicated high-precision and/or long-term RV observations. Our work provides a new perspective on the dynamical formation of Gaia BH3, and the methodology is readily applicable to similar systems such as HD 130298, Gaia BH1, and Gaia BH2.