Related papers: Massive black hole binary mergers within sub-pc sc…
It is still unknown how the BBH evolves after its semi-major axis reached to the sub-parsec/parsec scale where the dynamical friction with the neighboring stars is no longer effective (the so-called the final parsec problem). In this paper,…
Angular momentum transport in high-mass stars is commonly modeled by extrapolating the behavior of better-observed low-mass stars. According to the conventional picture, the cores of most black hole progenitors lose almost all of their…
The coalescence of supermassive black hole binaries occurs via the emission of gravitational waves, that can impart a substantial recoil to the merged black hole. We consider the energy dissipation, that results if the recoiling black hole…
Massive black hole binaries are naturally predicted in the context of the hierarchical model of structure formation. The binaries that manage to lose most of their angular momentum can coalesce to form a single remnant. In the last stages…
The question whether the interaction of a circumbinary disc with the central binary system leads to shrinking or expansion of the binary orbit has attracted considerable interest as it impacts the evolution of binary black holes and stellar…
Circumbinary disks are found in a variety of astrophysical scenarios, spanning binary star formation to accreting supermassive black hole binaries. The interaction with a circumbinary disk can yield opposite effects on the binary orbit…
In currently favoured hierarchical cosmologies, the formation of massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) following galaxy mergers is unavoidable. Still, due the complex physics governing the (hydro)dynamics of the post-merger dense environment…
Stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) embedded in active galactic nucleus (AGN) discs offer a distinct dynamical channel to produce black hole mergers detected in gravitational waves by LIGO/Virgo. To understand their orbital evolution…
We discuss the latest results of numerical simulations following the orbital decay of massive black hole pairs in galaxy mergers. We highlight important differences between gas-poor and gas-rich hosts, and between orbital evolution taking…
As the number of observed merging binary black holes (BHs) grows, accurate models are required to disentangle multiple formation channels. In models with isolated binaries, important uncertainties remain regarding the stability of mass…
Observations suggest that star clusters often form in binaries or larger bound groups. Therefore, mergers between two clusters are likely to occur. If these clusters both harbor an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH; 10^{2-4} Msun) in their…
Black hole binary systems embedded in AGN discs have been proposed as a source of the observed gravitational waves (GWs) from LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA. Studies have indicated binary-single encounters could be common place within this population,…
We perform magnetohydrodynamic simulations of accreting, equal-mass binary black holes in full general relativity focusing on the impact of black hole spin on the dynamical formation and evolution of minidisks. We find that during the late…
We investigate properties of black hole (BH) binaries formed in globular clusters via dynamical processes, using direct N-body simulations. We pay attention to effects of BH mass function on the total mass and mass ratio distributions of BH…
We explore the properties of dense star clusters that are likely to be the nurseries of stellar black holes pairing in close binaries. We combine a cosmological model of globular cluster formation with analytic prescriptions for the…
The predicted rate of binary black hole mergers from galactic fields can vary over several orders of magnitude and is extremely sensitive to the assumptions of stellar evolution. But in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters,…
The association of an electromagnetic signal with the merger of a pair of supermassive black holes would have many important implications. For example, it would provide new information about gas and magnetic field interactions in dynamical…
Binary black hole (BBH) mergers, particularly those with component masses in the pair-instability gap, may be produced by hierarchical mergers in the disks surrounding Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). While the interaction of an embedded BBH…
The shrinking of a binary orbit driven by the interaction with a gaseous circumbinary disc, initially advocated as a potential way to catalyze the binary merger, has been recently debated in the case of geometrically thick (i.e. with…
We present a new approach to studying the evolution of massive black hole binaries in a stellar environment. By imposing conservation of total energy and angular momentum in scattering experiments, we find the dissipation forces that are…