Related papers: Black Hole Formation and Growth: Simulations in Ge…
Supernova theory suggests that black holes of a stellar origin cannot attain masses in the range of 50-135 solar masses in isolation. We argue here that this mass gap is filled in by black holes that grow by gas accretion in dense stellar…
Significant progress has been made in the last few years on understanding how supermassive black holes form and grow. In this paper, we begin by reviewing the spectral signatures of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) ranging from radio to hard…
Black holes, an extreme consequence of the mathematics of General Relativity, have long been suspected of being the prime movers of quasars, which emit more energy than any other objects in the Universe. Recent evidence indicates that…
The hierarchical build-up of galactic bulges should lead to the build-up of present-day supermassive black holes by a mixture of gas accretion and merging of supermassive black holes. The tight relation between black hole mass and stellar…
We present a novel self-consistent theoretical framework to characterize the formation, evolution, and merger sites of dynamically-formed black hole binaries, with a focus on explaining the most massive events observed by the…
Mass distribution of black holes in low-mass X-ray binaries previously suggested the existence of a $ \sim 2-5M_{\odot} $ mass gap between the most massive neutron stars and the least massive black holes, while some recent evidence appears…
We study the formation of black holes from subhorizon and superhorizon perturbations in a matter dominated universe with 3+1D numerical relativity simulations. We find that there are two primary mechanisms of formation depending on the…
We present self-consistent numerical simulations in general relativity of putative primordial black holes inside neutron stars. Complementing a companion paper in which we assumed the black hole mass $m$ to be much smaller than the mass…
Primordial black holes may form in the early Universe, for example from the collapse of large amplitude density perturbations predicted in some inflationary models. Light black holes undergo Hawking evaporation, the energy injection from…
Any observer outside black holes cannot detect any physical signal produced by the black holes themselves, since, by definition, the black holes are not located in the causal past of the outside observer. In fact, what we regard as black…
Super-massive black holes, with masses larger than a million times that of the Sun, appear to inhabit the centers of all massive galaxies. Cosmologically-motivated theories of galaxy formation need feedback from these super-massive black…
This article reviews the current status of black hole astrophysics, focusing on topics of interest to a physics audience. Astronomers have discovered dozens of compact objects with masses greater than 3 solar masses, the likely maximum mass…
We study the evolution of light spectator fields in an asymmetric polynomial potential. During inflation, stochastic fluctuations displace the spectator field from the global minimum of its potential, populating the false vacuum state and…
The Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) are gradually involved into consideration as the phenomenon having reliable basis. We discuss here the possibility of their agglomeration into clusters that may have several prominent observable features.…
We investigate a model in which galactic nuclei form via the coalescence of pre-existing stellar systems containing supermassive black holes. Merger simulations are carried out using N-body algorithms that can follow the formation and decay…
Understanding the formation and evolution of stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) requires a thorough investigation of the key physical processes involved. While one pathway involves the isolated evolution of massive binary stars,…
Massive central objects affect both the structure and evolution of galactic nuclei. Adiabatic growth of black holes generates power-law central density profiles with logarithmic slopes in the range from ~1.5 to ~2.5, in good agreement with…
Fundamental fields are a natural outcome in cosmology and particle physics and might therefore serve as a proxy for more complex interactions. The equivalence principle implies that all forms of matter gravitate, and one therefore expects…
Black holes, dark energy, and the Higgs field are all currently established, exciting, and mysterious, each in its own way. Cosmological data show that dark energy may evolve with time. The electroweak phase transition during stellar…
We describe some key astrophysical processes driving the formation and evolution of black hole binaries of different nature, from stellar-mass to supermassive systems. In the first part, we focus on the mainstream channels proposed for the…