Related papers: Black hole mergers: can gas discs solve the `final…
Many galaxies are expected to harbor binary supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in their centers. Their interaction with the surrounding gas results in accretion and exchange of angular momentum via tidal torques, facilitating binary inspiral.…
Massive binary black holes form at the centre of galaxies that experience a merger episode. They are expected to coalesce into a larger black hole, following the emission of gravitational waves. Coalescing massive binary black holes are…
Supermassive black hole binaries are likely to accrete interstellar gas through a circumbinary disk. Shortly before merger, the inner portions of this circumbinary disk are subject to general relativistic effects. To study this regime, we…
We examine the effect of an accretion disc on the orbits of stars in the central star cluster surrounding a central massive black hole by performing a suite of 39 high-accuracy direct N-body simulations using state-of-the art software and…
At the final stages of a supermassive black hole coalescence, the emission of gravitational waves will efficiently remove energy and angular momentum from the binary orbit, allowing the separation between the compact objects to shrink. In…
The final merger of a pair of massive black holes in a galactic nucleus is compelled by gravitational radiation. Gravitational waves from the mergers of black holes of masses (10^5-10^7)(1+z)^{-1} Msun at redshifts of 1-20 will be readily…
The dynamics of two massive black holes in a rotationally supported nuclear disc of 10^8 solar masses is explored using N-Body/SPH simulations. Gas and star particles are co-present in the disc. Described by a Mestel profile, the disc has a…
Recent simulations show that the eccentricity of supermassive binary black hole with intermediate mass ratio could grow toward near unity through gravitational interaction with the stellar background in the merging remnant after two…
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…
We present general relativistic magneto-hydrodynamical simulations of equal-mass spinning black hole binary mergers embedded in a magnetized gas cloud. We focus on the effect of the spin orientation relative to the orbital angular momentum…
In spherical galaxies, binary supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have difficulty reaching sub-parsec separations due to depletion of stars on orbits that intersect the massive binary - the final-parsec problem. Galaxies that form via major…
The study of the interaction of a massive black hole binary with its gaseous environment is crucial in order to be able to predict merger rates and possible electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational wave signals. The evolution of the…
Coalescing massive black hole binaries are produced by the mergers of galaxies. The final stages of the black hole coalescence produce strong gravitational radiation that can be detected by the space-borne LISA. In cases where the black…
We study the formation of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary and the shrinking of the separation of the two holes to sub-pc scales starting from a realistic major merger between two gas-rich spiral galaxies with mass comparable to our…
We study the dynamical evolution of supermassive black holes, in the late stage of galaxy mergers, from kpc to pc scales. In particular, we capture the formation of the binary, a necessary step before the final coalescence, and trace back…
Recent gravitational wave observations include possible detections of black hole - neutron star binary mergers. As with binary black hole mergers, numerical simulations help characterize the sources. For binary systems with neutron star…
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…
We study the effect of mergers on the morphology of galaxies by means of the simulated merger tree approach first proposed by Moster et al. This method combines N-body cosmological simulations and semi-analytic techniques to extract…
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…
We report on key studies on the dynamics of black holes (BHs) in gas-rich galaxy mergers that underscore the vital role played by gas dissipation in promoting BH inspiral down to the smallest scales ever probed with use of high-resolution…