Galaxy merger-driven signatures in massive black hole pair hosts across cosmic time

Galaxy mergers can drive gas toward galactic nuclei, enhancing both star formation and black hole accretion in post-merger galaxies. Here we use the IllustrisTNG-50 simulation and two boxes from the BRAHMA simulation suite, all of which adopt different black hole formation models, to characterize merger-associated signatures in candidate massive black hole (MBH)-pair hosts. In all three simulations, we select post-merger galaxies whose progenitors both host MBHs and quantify their enhancements in star formation and black hole accretion relative to matched non-merging controls. In TNG50, we find substantial merger-triggered enhancements in both specific star formation rate (sSFR) and specific black hole accretion rate (sBHAR) at 0 at most z < 3.3, reaching about 1.4 times and about 1.5-1.7 times the controls, respectively. The BRAHMA runs employ more physically motivated seed formation models, seeding BHs in lower-mass galaxies and at higher redshifts than TNG50. In BRAHMA, merger-driven enhancements in sSFR and gas fractions are comparable to those in TNG50 at z 3.3 and persist to the highest redshifts probed by BRAHMA (z about 6). Despite this, BRAHMA shows no significant merger-driven enhancement in sBHAR across its entire redshift range. In a similar vein, TNG50 pair hosts show an enhanced AGN fraction relative to matched controls, whereas BRAHMA shows only a weak excess among the most rapidly accreting MBHs.