Related papers: On the identification of substructure in phase-spa…
Black holes are superb sources of gravitational wave signals, for example when they are born in stellar collapse. We explore the subtleties that may emerge if mass accretion events increase significantly the mass of the black hole during…
How do galaxies move relative to one another? While we can examine the motion of dark matter subhalos around their hosts in simulations of structure formation, determining the orbits of satellites around their parent galaxies from…
Compact objects evolving in an astrophysical environment experience a gravitational drag force known as dynamical friction. We present a multipole-frequency decomposition to evaluate the orbit-averaged energy and angular momentum…
We consider the orbital evolution of satellites in galaxy mergers, focusing on the evolution of eccentricity. Using a large suite of N-body simulations, we study the phenomenon of satellite orbital radialization -- a profound increase in…
The role that minor mergers have played in the formation and structure of the Milky Way is still an open question, about which there is much debate. We use numerical simulations to explore the evolution of debris from a tidally disrupted…
We model the formation of the Galactic stellar halo via the accretion of satellite galaxies onto a time-dependent semi-cosmological galactic potential. Our goal is to characterize the substructure left by these accretion events in a close…
Motion of stellar-mass satellites is studied around a massive compact body which is surrounded by a gaseous slab of a stationary accretion disc. The satellites suffer an orbital decay due to hydrodynamical interaction with the disc medium…
While mergers between massive galaxies and their dwarf satellites are well studied, the properties of dwarf - dwarf satellite mergers are not well constrained. Stellar streams trace satellite disruption and, in the dwarf galaxy regime, are…
We present simulations of the formation of thick disks via the accretion of two-component satellites onto a pre-existing thin disk. Our goal is to establish the detailed characteristics of the thick disks obtained in this way, as well as…
The $\Lambda$CDM cosmological scenario predicts that our Galaxy should contain hundreds of stellar streams at the solar vicinity, fossil relics of the merging history of the Milky Way and more generally of the hierarchical growth of…
In the $\Lambda$-Cold Dark Matter model of the Universe, galaxies form in part through accreting satellite systems. Previous work have built an understanding of the signatures of these processes contained within galactic stellar halos. This…
We perform a suite of high-resolution smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations to investigate the orbital decay and mass evolution of massive black hole (MBH) pairs down to scales of ~30 pc during minor mergers of disk galaxies. Our…
We review the recent multifrequency studies of galactic black hole binaries, aiming at revealing the underlying emission processes and physical properties in these systems. The optical and infrared observations are important for determining…
This paper presents a novel formulation and solution of orbit determination over finite time horizons as a learning problem. We present an approach to orbit determination under very broad conditions that are satisfied for n-body problems.…
Recent years have seen the discovery of many tidal streams through the Galaxy. Relatively straightforward observations of a stream allow one to deduce three phase-space coordinates of an orbit. An algorithm is presented that reconstructs…
We use high-resolution numerical simulations to study the physical properties of subhalos when they merge into their host halos. An improved algorithm is used to identify the subhalos. We then examine their spatial and velocity…
We show how one can estimate the multipole moments of the space-time, assuming that the quasi-periodic modulations of the X-ray flux (quasi-periodic oscillations), observed from accreting neutron stars or black holes, are due to orbital and…
We study the orbital properties of stars in four (published) simulations of thick disks formed by: i) accretion from disrupted satellites, ii) heating of a pre-existing thin disk by a minor merger, iii) radial migration and iv) gas rich…
Many of the Milky Way's globular clusters are likely accreted from satellite galaxies that have long since merged with the Milky Way. When these globular clusters are susceptible to tidal disruption, this process likely starts already…
We further investigate the long-term evolution of a trajectory of a stellar-mass orbiter which is gravitationally bound to a massive central body. The orbiter undergoes repetitionary collisions with an accretion disc. We consider eccentric…