Related papers: Can binary mergers produce maximally spinning blac…
I overview the current understanding of the evolution of massive black hole (MBH) binaries in the center of the host stellar system. One of the main questions is whether the stellar dynamical effect can make the MBH binary hard enough that…
The astrophysical origins of the binary black hole systems seen with gravitational waves are still not well understood. However, features in the distribution of black-hole masses, spins, redshifts, and eccentricities provide clues into how…
We study the inspiral, merger and ringdown of unequal mass black hole binaries by analyzing a catalogue of numerical simulations for seven different values of the mass ratio (from q=M2/M1=1 to q=4). We compare numerical and Post-Newtonian…
The origins of the coalescing binary black holes (BBHs) detected by the advanced LIGO/Virgo are still in debate and clues may present in the mass and effective spin ($\chi_{\rm eff}$) distributions of these merger events. Here we analyze…
We present general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of merging equal-mass, spinning black holes embedded in an equatorial thin slab of magnetized gas. We evolve black holes either non-spinning, with spins aligned to the orbital…
Binary supermassive black holes form naturally in galaxy mergers, but their long-term evolution is uncertain. In spherical galaxies, N-body simulations show that binary evolution stalls at separations much too large for significant emission…
Repeated black-hole mergers in dense stellar clusters are a plausible mechanism to populate the predicted gap in black hole masses due to the pair-instability supernova process. These hierarchical mergers carry distinct spin characteristics…
Recent breakthroughs in the field of numerical relativity have led to dramatic progress in understanding the predictions of General Relativity for the dynamical interactions of two black holes in the regime of very strong gravitational…
Recent calculations of the recoil velocity in black-hole binary mergers have found kick velocities of $\approx2500 $km/s for equal-mass binaries with anti-aligned initial spins in the orbital plane. In general the dynamics of spinning black…
We report a new binary black hole merger in the publicly available LIGO First Observing Run (O1) data release. The event has an inverse false alarm rate of one per six years in the detector-frame chirp-mass range $\mathcal{M}^{\rm det} \in…
We investigate how to use information on the effective spin parameter of binary black hole mergers from the LIGO-Virgo gravitational wave detections to discriminate the origin of the merging black holes. We calculate the expected…
We derive an analytic phenomenological expression that predicts the final mass of the black-hole remnant resulting from the merger of a generic binary system of black holes on quasi-circular orbits. Besides recovering the correct…
Possible formation mechanisms of massive close binary black holes that can merge in the Hubble time to produce powerful gravitational wave bursts detected during advanced LIGO O1 science run are briefly discussed. The pathways include the…
Black hole spins affect the efficiency of the "classical" accretion processes, hence the radiative output from quasars. Spins also determine how much energy is extractable from the hole itself. Recently it became clear that massive black…
As a first step towards understanding the angular momentum evolution history of black holes in merging black-hole/neutron-star binaries, we perform population synthesis calculations to track the distribution of accretion histories of…
The inspiral of binary black holes is governed by gravitational radiation reaction at binary separations r < 1000 M, yet it is too computationally expensive to begin numerical-relativity simulations with initial separations r > 10 M.…
In this work, we use general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations to explore the effect of spin orientation on the dynamics of gas in the vicinity of merging black holes. We present a suite of eight simulations of unequal-mass,…
In this short paper we discuss the possibility of testing the nature of astrophysical black holes using the recently observed black hole mergers. We investigate the possibility that a secondary black hole is created in the merger of two…
Gravitational-wave observations of massive, rapidly spinning binary black holes mergers provide increasing evidence for the dynamical origin of some mergers. Previous studies have interpreted the mergers with primary mass…
The increase in the sensitivity of gravitational wave interferometers will bring additional detections of binary black hole and double neutron star mergers. It will also very likely add many merger events of black hole - neutron star…