Related papers: Measuring the low mass end of the Mbh - sigma rela…
The first LIGO-Virgo detections have confirmed the existence of massive black holes (BHs), with mass $30-40$ M$_\odot$. Such BHs might originate from massive metal-poor stars ($Z<0.3$ Z$_\odot$) or from gravitational instabilities in the…
We present a simple but general argument that strongly limits the abundance of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) (or other unknown population of compact objects) with masses similar to those determined by LIGO/Virgo from BH binary mergers. We…
We have tested the effect of spatial gradients in stellar mass-to-light ratio (Y) on measurements of black hole masses (MBH) derived from stellar orbit superposition models. Such models construct a static gravitational potential for a…
We present high-quality Keck/LRIS longslit spectroscopy of a pilot sample of 25 local active galaxies selected from the SDSS (0.02<z<0.1; MBH>10^7 M_sun) to study the relations between black hole mass (MBH) and host-galaxy properties. We…
Supermassive black hole masses (MBH) can dynamically be estimated with various methods and using different kinematic tracers. Different methods have only been cross-checked for a small number of galaxies and often show discrepancies. To…
A new statistical method for pinpointing the massive black hole (BH) in the Galactic Center on the IR grid is presented and applied to astrometric IR observations of stars close to the BH. This is of interest for measuring the IR emission…
The Minimal Supersymmetric Extension of the Standard Model (MSSM) features a light Higgs boson, the mass Mh of which is predicted by the theory. Given that the LHC will be able to measure the mass of a light Higgs with great accuracy, a…
A new sample of 204 low-mass black holes (LMBHs) in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is presented with black hole masses in the range of (1-20) * 10^5 M_sun. The AGNs are selected from a systematic search among galaxies in the Seventh Data…
Intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) with a mass between $10^{2}$ and $10^{5}$ times that of the sun, which bridges the {mass gap between the} stellar-mass black holes and the supermassive black holes, are crucial in understanding the…
We have re-examined the relation between the mass of the central black holes in nearby galaxies, M_bh, and the stellar mass of the surrounding spheroid or bulge, M_bulge. For a total of 30 galaxies bulge masses were derived through Jeans…
We present an investigation of the scaling relations between Supermassive Black Hole (SMBH) masses (Mbh), and their host galaxies' K-band bulge (Lbul) and total (Ltot) luminosities. The wide-field WIRCam imager at the…
Idealized models are used to illustrate the potential of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) as a probe of the largely unknown population of cosmologically-distant Massive Black Holes (MBHs) and as a tool to measure their masses…
We demonstrate that the luminosity function of the recently detected population of star-forming galaxies and the QSO luminosity function at z=3 can be matched with the mass function of dark matter haloes predicted by hierarchical…
We have investigated past measurements of the local supermassive black hole mass density, correcting for hitherto unknown dependencies on the Hubble constant, which, in some cases, had led to an underestimation of the mass density by…
Binary black holes (BBH) are expected to form and merge in active galactic nuclei (AGN), deep in the potential well of a supermassive black hole (SMBH), from populations that exist in a nuclear star cluster (NSC). Here we investigate the…
We present results from infrared spectroscopic projects that aim to test the relation between the mass of a black hole, M_BH, and the velocity dispersion of the stars in its host-galaxy bulge. We demonstrate that near-infrared,…
The growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) appears to be closely linked with the formation of spheroids. There is a pressing need to acquire better statistics on SMBH masses, since the existing samples are preferentially weighted toward…
A detailed analysis is presented of gravitational microlensing by intervening compact objects of the black hole shadows imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). We show how the center, size, and shape of the shadow depend on the…
An exact calculation of CaI $\lambda 6439.075$A absorption profiles in the spectra of optical stars in low-mass X-ray binary systems with black holes (BH LMXBs) is carried out. We show that the approximation of a real Roche lobe filling…
We have searched for long duration microlensing events originating from intermediate mass Black Holes (BH) in the halo of the Milky Way, using archival data from EROS-2 and MACHO photometric surveys towards the Large Magellanic Cloud. We…