Related papers: The statistical mechanics of relativistic orbits a…
Resonant relaxation (RR) of orbital angular momenta occurs near massive black holes (MBHs) where the stellar orbits are nearly Keplerian and so do not precess significantly. The resulting coherent torques efficiently change the magnitude of…
The coherent torques between stars on orbits near massive black holes (MBHs) lead to resonant angular momentum relaxation. Due to the fact that orbits are Keplerian to good approximation, the torques efficiently change the magnitude of the…
In nuclear star clusters, the potential is governed by the central massive black hole, so that stars move on nearly Keplerian orbits and the total potential is almost stationary in time. Yet, the deviations of the potential from the…
In the vicinity of a massive black hole, stars move on precessing Keplerian orbits. The mutual stochastic gravitational torques between the stellar orbits drive a rapid reorientation of their orbital planes, through a process called vector…
General relativistic precession limits the ability of gravitational encounters to increase the eccentricity $e$ of orbits near a supermassive black hole (SBH). This "Schwarzschild barrier" (SB) has been shown to play an important role in…
A massive black hole (MBH) consumes stars whose orbits evolve into the small phase-space volume of unstable orbits, the "loss-cone", which take them directly into the MBH, or close enough to interact strongly with it. The resulting…
We present a theory for describing the evolution of a galaxy caused by stochastic events such as weak mergers, transient spiral structure, orbiting blobs, etc. This noise excites large-scale patterns that drives the evolution of the…
We estimate the amplitude of the nano-Hz stochastic gravitational wave background (GWB) resulting from an unresolved population of inspiralling massive black hole binaries (MBHBs). To this aim, we use the L-Galaxies semi-analytical model…
We present a first-principles theory of Resonant Relaxation (RR) of a low mass stellar system orbiting a more massive black hole (MBH). We first extend the kinetic theory of Gilbert (1968) to include the Keplerian field of a black hole of…
We study the Resonant Relaxation (RR) of an axisymmetric low mass (or Keplerian) stellar disc orbiting a more massive black hole (MBH). Our recent work on the general kinetic theory of RR is simplified in the standard manner by ignoring the…
An accreting massive black hole (MBH) in a galactic nucleus is surrounded by a dense stellar cluster. We analyze and simulate numerically the evolution of a thin accretion disk due to its internal viscous torques, due to the frame-dragging…
We demonstrate the existence of an enhanced rate of angular momentum relaxation in nearly Keplerian star clusters, such as those found in the centers of galactic nuclei containing massive black holes. The enhanced relaxation arises because…
We analyze the dynamical evolution of binary stars that interact with a static background of single stars in the environment of a massive black hole (MBH). All stars are considered to be single mass, Newtonian point particles. We follow the…
Observations have revealed that nearly all galaxies contain supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at their centers. When galaxies merge, these SMBHs form SMBH binaries (SMBHBs) that emit low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs). The incoherent…
Inspiral of compact stellar remnants into massive black holes (MBHs) is accompanied by the emission of gravitational waves at frequencies that are potentially detectable by space-based interferometers. Event rates computed from statistical…
Stars on eccentric orbits around a massive black hole (MBH) emit bursts of gravitational waves (GWs) at periapse. Such events may be directly resolvable in the Galactic centre. However, if the star does not spiral in, the emitted GWs are…
The angular momentum evolution of stars close to massive black holes (MBHs) is driven by secular torques. In contrast to two-body relaxation, where interactions between stars are incoherent, the resulting resonant relaxation (RR) process is…
Direct numerical integrations of the Fokker-Planck equation in energy-angular momentum space are carried out for stars orbiting a supermassive black hole (SBH) at the center of a galaxy. The algorithm, which was described in detail in an…
The physics of angular momentum transport from galactic scales (~10-100 pc) to much smaller radii is one of the oustanding problems in our understanding of the formation and evolution of super-massive black holes (BHs). Seemingly unrelated…
In this paper, we consider angular momentum fluctuations of a Schwartzschild black hole in thermal equilibrium with radiation which, for the sake of simplicity is here modeled by a scalar field. Important, we do not set the black hole…