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Related papers: Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in Globular Clusters

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We investigate the evolution of intermediate-mass (IMBHs), stellar (BHs) and binary black holes (BHBs), deposited near a supermassive black hole (SMBH) by a population of massive star clusters. Stellar BHs rapidly segregate around the SMBH,…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-11-28 Manuel Arca-Sedda , Roberto Capuzzo-Dolcetta

Globular clusters (GCs) may harbour intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) at their centres. In these dynamically active environments stellar-mass black holes (SBHs) sink to the center soon after formation, due to dynamical friction and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-07-31 Giacomo Fragione , Omer Bromberg

Mergers of stellar-mass black holes were recently observed in the gravitational wave window opened by LIGO. This puts the spotlight on dense stellar systems and their ability to create intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) through repeated…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-06-29 Mario Pasquato

Intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs), with masses between 100 to 10^5 M_\odot, represent the link between stellar mass black holes and the supermassive black holes that reside in galaxy centers. While IMBHs are crucial to our understanding…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-07-25 Jenna M. Cann , Shobita Satyapal , Nicholas P. Abel , Claudio Ricci , Nathan J. Secrest , Laura Blecha , Mario Gliozzi

We study the formation of massive black holes in the first star clusters. We first locate star-forming gas clouds in proto-galactic haloes of $\gtrsim \!10^7\,{\rm M}_{\odot}$ in cosmological hydrodynamics simulations and use them to…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-08-15 Yuya Sakurai , Naoki Yoshida , Michiko S. Fujii , Shingo Hirano

Recently, an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) candidate was announced in the Galactic globular cluster Omega Centauri. IMBHs at the lower end of the traditional mass range have also been detected through gravitational-wave transients,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-03-02 Miguel A. S. Martinez , Elena González Prieto , Frederic A. Rasio

Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) with masses below ($2 \times 10^5 M_{\odot}$) are pivotal in understanding the origin and growth mechanisms of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei. This study focuses on the search and…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-10-03 V. Goradzhanov , I. Chilingarian , M. Demianenko , I. Katkov , K. Grishin , V. Toptun , E. Rubtsov , D. Gasymov , I. Kuzmin

Theoretical models predict that intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) exist in globular clusters (GCs), but observational evidence remains elusive. Millisecond pulsars (MSPs), which are abundant in GCs and have served as precise probes for…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-07-15 Xian Chen , Verónica Vázquez-Aceves , Siyuan Chen , Kejia Lee , Yanjun Guo , Kuo Liu

We consider the formation of binary intermediate black holes (BIMBH) in globular clusters (GC), which could happen either in situ or due to the mergers between clusters. We simulate the evolution of the BIMBH orbit (and its subsequent…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-09-16 Alexander Rasskazov , Giacomo Fragione , Bence Kocsis

For a sample of nine Galactic globular clusters we measured the inner kinematic profiles with integral-field spectroscopy that we combined with existing outer kinematic measurements and HST luminosity profiles. With this information we are…

Recent observations of globular clusters (GCs) provide evidence that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) may not be universal, suggesting specifically that the IMF grows increasingly top-heavy with decreasing metallicity and increasing…

Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs: masses between $100 - 10^{6} M_{\odot}$) historically comprise of an elusive population compared to stellar-mass and supermassive BHs. Recently IMBHs have started to be observed at the centers of…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-06-19 Paramita Barai , Elisabete M. de Gouveia Dal Pino

The origin of supermassive black holes (SMBH) in galaxy centers still remains uncertain. There are two possible ways of their formation - from massive ($10^5 - 10^6 M_{\odot}$) and low-mass ($100 M_{\odot}$) BH nuclei. The latter scenario…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-09-28 Victoria Toptun , Igor Chilingarian , Kirill Grishin , Ivan Katkov , Ivan Zolotukhin , Vladimir Goradzhanov , Mariia Demianenko , Ivan Kuzmun

Observational evidence has been mounting for the existence of intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs, 10^2-10^5 Msun), but observing them at all, much less constraining their masses, is very challenging. In one theorized formation channel,…

Dense stellar environments like nuclear star clusters (NSCs) can dynamically assemble gravitational wave (GW) sources. We consider a population of single stellar mass black holes (BHs) in the inner $0.1$~pc of a NSC surrounding a $4 \times…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-02-10 Amanda Newton , Sanaea C. Rose , Fulya Kıroğlu , Bao-Minh Hoang , Frederic A. Rasio

Growing evidence indicate supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the mass range of $M_{\rm BH}$$\sim 10^6-10^{10}M_{\odot}$ lurking in central bulges of many galaxies. Extensive observations reveal fairly tight power laws of $M_{\rm BH}$…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-06-25 Yu-Qing Lou , Yan-Fei Jiang

In this paper, we study the secular dynamical evolution of binaries composed of intermediate-mass and stellar-mass black holes (IMBHs and SBHs, respectively) in orbit about a central super-massive black hole (SMBH) in galactic nuclei. Such…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-08-29 Giacomo Fragione , Nathan Leigh

Intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) are among the most elusive objects in contemporary astrophysics. Both theoretical and observational evidence of their existence is subject of debate. Conversely, both theory and observations confirm the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-06-11 Alberto Sesana , Nicola Sartore , Bernadetta Devecchi , Andrea Possenti

Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) by definition have masses of $M_{\rm IMBH} \sim 10^{2-5}~M_\odot$, a range with few observational constraints. Finding IMBHs in globular star clusters (GCs) would validate a formation channel for…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-09-08 J. M. Wrobel , T. J. Maccarone , J. C. A. Miller-Jones , K. E. Nyland

Nantais et al. used the Hubble Space Telescope to localize probable globular clusters (GCs) in M81, a spiral galaxy at a distance of 3.63 Mpc. Theory predicts that GCs can host intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) with masses M_BH \sim 100…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-07-06 J. M. Wrobel , J. C. A. Miller-Jones , M. J. Middleton