Related papers: Black Holes in the Galaxy
Collapsed objects have definitely been observed: some are stellar-mass objects, the endpoint of massive stars; others, millions of times more massive, have been discovered in the cores of most galaxies. Their formation poses some…
Stars with an initial mass more than ~25 Msun are thought to ultimately become black holes. Then stellar-mass black holes should be ubiquitous but fewer than 20 have been found in our Galaxy to date, all of which have been found through…
Binary black holes as the recently detected sources of gravitational waves can be formed from massive stellar binaries in the field or by dynamical interactions in clusters of high stellar density, if the black holes are the remnants of…
The mathematical simplicity of black holes, combined with their links to some of the most energetic events in the universe, means that black holes are key objects for fundamental physics and astrophysics. Until recently, it was generally…
Black holes are by definition black, and therefore cannot be directly observed by using electromagnetic radiations. Convincing identification of black holes must necessarily depend on the identification of a very specially behaving matter…
Our understanding of space and time is probed to its depths by black holes. These objects, which appear as a natural consequence of general relativity, provide a powerful analytical tool able to examine macroscopic and microscopic…
Black holes in binary star systems are vital for understanding the process of pr oducing gravitational wave sources, understanding how supernovae work, and for p roviding fossil evidence for the high mass stars from earlier in the Universe.…
We analyze the mass distribution of stellar black holes derived from the light and radial velocity curves of optical stars in close binary systems using dynamical methods. The systematic errors inherent in this approach are discussed. These…
Supermassive black holes have been discovered at the centers of galaxies, and also in globular clusters. The data shows correlations between the black hole mass and the elliptical galaxy mass or globular cluster mass. It is shown that this…
Since a black hole does not emit light from its interior, nor does it have a surface on which light from nearby sources can be reflected, observational study of black hole physics requires observing the gravitational impact of the black…
We discuss masses of stellar black holes found in binary systems and errors in their determination. The observed mass distribution has a broad shape within the range $4-16 M_\odot$ without visible concentration to some preferred value. On…
We review the current state of dynamical modeling for galaxies in terms of being able to measure both the central black hole mass and stellar orbital structure. Both of these must be known adequately to measure either property. The current…
X-ray astronomy is closely related to the study of black hole sources. The discovery that some unseen objects, more massive than any degenerate star, emit huge amounts of X-rays helped accept the concept that back holes are present in X-ray…
I present an elementary primer of black hole physics, including its general relativity basis, all peppered with astrophysical illustrations. Following a brief review of the process stellar collapse to a black hole, I discuss the…
In this chapter I focus on asking and answering the following questions: (1) What is a black hole? Answer: There are three types of black holes, namely mathematical black holes, physical black holes and astrophysical black holes. An…
Stellar mass black holes are formed in the field, and are observed in binaries. Population synthesis estimates for the formation of BH-PSR binaries suggest these may be observed, but with very large formal uncertainties in the formation…
The state of the searches for isolated black holes, non-accreting black holes in binary systems and, finally, the accreting black holes in the X-ray binaries is presented. The third category is, by far, the most important source of…
The distribution of black hole masses in galaxies is constrained by photometric and kinematic studies of individual galaxies, and by the properties of the quasar population. I review our understanding of these topics, present new results of…
In astronomy, the problem of black holes is arguably second in importance only to the problem of cosmology. A current frontier in black hole research is the measurement of spin. During the past three years, the spins of several stellar-mass…
The existence of massive black holes was postulated in the sixties, when the first quasars were discovered. In the late nineties their reality was proven beyond doubt, in the Milky way and a handful nearby galaxies. Since then, enormous…