Related papers: Alignment of supermassive black hole binary orbits…
Supermassive black hole binaries may form as a consequence of galaxy mergers. Both prograde and retrograde orbits have been proposed. We study a binary of a small mass ratio, q, in a retrograde orbit immersed in and interacting with a…
Using SPH numerical simulations, we investigate the effects of gas on the inspiral and merger of a massive black hole binary. This study is motivated by the very massive nuclear gas disks observed in the central regions of merging galaxies.…
Spectacular breakthroughs in numerical relativity now make it possible to compute spacetime dynamics in almost complete generality, allowing us to model the coalescence and merger of binary black holes with essentially no approximations.…
Primordial stellar-mass black holes, which may contribute to dark matter and to the observed LIGO binary black hole coalescences, are expected to be born with very low spins. Here we show that accretion mass gain by the components of a…
As a first step towards understanding the angular momentum evolution history of black holes in merging black-hole/neutron-star binaries, we perform population synthesis calculations to track the distribution of accretion histories of…
If the activity of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is predominantly induced by major galaxy mergers, then a significant fraction of AGNs should harbor binary massive black holes in their centers. We study the mass function of binary massive…
In this work we study the dynamics of spinning binary black hole systems in the strong field regime. For this purpose we extract from numerical relativity simulations the binding energy, specific orbital angular momentum, and…
Using high-resolution SPH numerical simulations, we investigate the effects of gas on the inspiral and merger of a massive black hole binary. This study is motivated by both observational and theoretical work that indicate the presence of…
The extensive catalog of waveforms, with details of binary black hole inspiral and merger, offer an opportunity to understand black hole interactions beyond the large separation regime. We envision a research program that focuses on the…
We report results from simulations in general relativity of magnetized disks accreting onto merging black hole binaries, starting from relaxed disk initial data. The simulations feature an effective, rapid radiative cooling scheme as a…
We present the first fully relativistic longterm numerical evolutions of three equal-mass black holes in a system consisting of a third black hole in a close orbit about a black-hole binary. We find that these close-three-black-hole systems…
We study the long-term orbital evolution of stars around a merging massive or supermassive black-hole (BH) binary, taking into account the general relativistic effect induced by the BH spin. When the BH spin is significant compared to and…
In a recent paper we have shown that the evolution of a misaligned disc around a spinning black hole can result in tearing the disc into many distinct planes. Tearing discs with random orientations produce direct dynamical accretion on to…
We perform magnetohydrodynamic simulations of accreting, equal-mass binary black holes in full general relativity focusing on the effect of spin and minidisks on the accretion rate and Poynting luminosity variability. We report on the…
We consider a scenario for the longest duration gamma ray bursts, resulting from the collapse of a massive star in a close binary system with a companion black hole. The primary black hole born during the core collapse is spun up and…
A typical galaxy is thought to contain tens of millions of stellar-mass black holes, the collapsed remnants of once massive stars, and a single nuclear supermassive black hole. Both classes of black holes accrete gas from their…
During post-Newtonian evolution of a compact binary, a mass ratio different from 1 provides a second small parameter, which can lead to unexpected results. We present a statistics of supermassive black hole candidates, which enables us…
The barycenter of a massive black hole binary will lie outside the event horizon of the primary black hole for modest values of mass ratio and binary separation. Analagous to radial velocity shifts in stellar emission lines caused by the…
Modern astrophysical methods of determination of spins of rotating stellar-mass black hole in close binaries and of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei are briefly discussed. Effective spins of coalescing binary black holes…
We prove that merging supermassive black holes (SMBHs) typically have neither equal masses, nor is their mass ratio too extreme. The majority of such mergers fall into the mass ratio range of 1:30 to 1:3, implying a spin flip during the…