Related papers: Supermassive binary black hole mergers
The recent detection of the binary black hole merger GW150914 demonstrates the existence of black holes more massive than previously observed in X-ray binaries in our Galaxy. This article explores different scenarios of black hole formation…
Strong gravitational lensing occurs when photons pass through the vicinity of a black hole. We investigate this phenomenon in the context of a gravitational-wave event, specifically when a black hole is settling into its final state. The…
Supermassive black holes at the centre of galactic nuclei mostly grow in mass through gas accretion over cosmic time. This process also modifies the angular momentum (or spin) of black holes, both in magnitude and in orientation. Despite…
We use the `moving puncture' approach to perform fully non-linear evolutions of spinning quasi-circular black-hole binaries with individual spins not aligned with the orbital angular momentum. We evolve configurations with the individual…
Merging binary black holes embedded in gaseous environments, such as supermassive black hole binaries following gas-rich galaxy mergers, are promising sources of multi-messenger transients in the upcoming age of space-based gravitational…
The first direct detections of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes open a unique window into the binary black hole formation environment. One promising environmental signature is the angular distribution of the black hole…
We revisit the phases of the pairing and sinking of BHs in galaxy mergers and circunmunclear disks in light of the results of recent simulations with massive BHs embedded in predominantly gaseous backgrounds. After a general overview we…
The possible formation mechanisms of massive close binary black holes (BHs) that can merge in the Hubble time to produce powerful gravitational wave bursts detected during advanced LIGO O1 and O2 science runs include the evolution from…
We study the general relativitic (GR) effects induced by a spinning supermassive black hole on the orbital and spin evolution of a merging black hole binary (BHB) in a hierarchical triple system. A sufficiently inclined outer orbit can…
The merger process of a binary black hole system can have a strong impact on a circumbinary disk. In the present work we study the effect of both central mass reduction (due to the energy loss through gravitational waves) and a possible…
We present results of numerical simulations of sequences of binary-single scattering events of black holes in dense stellar environments. The simulations cover a wide range of mass ratios from equal mass objects to 1000:10:10 solar masses…
There is a high level of interest in black hole-neutron star binaries, not only because their mergers may be detected by gravitational wave observatories in the coming years, but also because of the possibility that they could explain a…
We model the spectra and light curves of circumbinary accretion disks during the time after the central black holes merge. The most immediate effect of this merger is the dissipation of energy in the outer regions of the disk due to the…
We study a new channel for binary system formation involving stars and stellar-mass primordial black holes (PBHs) embedded in dark matter (DM) minihalos. In this scenario, binaries form when a star passes through the DM minihalo surrounding…
Binary black-hole systems with spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum are of special interest, as studies indicate that this configuration is preferred in nature. If the spins of the two bodies differ, there can be a prominent…
The orientation of a massive binary undergoes a random walk due to gravitational encounters with field stars. The rotational diffusion coefficient for a circular-orbit binary is derived via scattering experiments. The binary is shown to…
Population inference of gravitational-wave catalogues is a useful tool to translate observations of black-hole mergers into constraints on compact-binary formation. Different formation channels predict identifiable signatures in the…
We consider a scenario for the longest duration gamma ray bursts, resulting from the collapse of a massive star in a close binary system with a companion black hole. The primary black hole born during the core collapse is spun up and…
At the centre of a spherical and kinematically isotropic galaxy, the orientation of a massive binary black hole (BBH) orbit (i.e., the direction of the BBH orbital angular momentum) undergoes a random walk. If the stars in a spherical…
From the results of numerical scattering experiments and simulations of a massive black hole binary in spherically symmetric and shallow cores it has been deduced that most likely the shrinking process stalls due to loss-cone depletion…