Related papers: A close-pair binary in a distant triple supermassi…
Accreting binaries containing a black hole are stellar systems composed of a normal star and a black hole. Because of the strong gravitational pull of the black hole, matter is removed from the companion star and falls into the compact ob…
Recent observations of massive galaxies indicate that they double in mass and quintuple in size between redshift z = 1 and the present, despite undergoing very little star formation, suggesting that galaxy mergers drive the evolution. Since…
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 identify SDSS J153636.22+044127.0, a QSO discovered in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, as a promising candidate for a binary black hole system. This QSO has two broad-line emission systems separated by 3500 km/sec. The redder system at…
Binary neutron-star mergers will predominantly produce black-hole remnants of mass $\sim 3-4\,M_{\odot}$, thus populating the putative \emph{low mass gap} between neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes. If these low-mass black holes are…
HR 6819 was recently claimed to be a hierarchical triple system of a Be star in a wide orbit around an inner binary system of a black hole (BH) and a B III type star. We argue that this system is unlikely to be a hierarchical triple due to…
In dense stellar environments, the merger products of binary black hole mergers may undergo additional mergers. These hierarchical mergers are predicted to have higher masses than the first generation of black holes made from stars. The…
We present observational evidence for three massive, accreting black holes in the $z=5.0167$ galaxy J0148-4214 from JWST/NIRSpec-IFU spectroscopy. The black holes are revealed through broad H$\alpha$ emission (FWHM = 430-2920 km/s) without…
A chain regularization method is combined with special purpose computer hardware to study the evolution of massive black hole binaries at the centers of galaxies. Preliminary results with up to N=260,000 particles are presented. The decay…
Binaries consisting of a pulsar and a black hole (BH) are a holy grail of astrophysics, both for their significance for stellar evolution and for their potential application as probes of strong gravity. In spite of extensive surveys of our…
Stellar-mass black holes are discovered in X-ray emitting binary systems, where their mass can be determined from the dynamics of their companion stars. Models of stellar evolution have difficulty producing black holes in close binaries…
We report the discovery of a kiloparsec-scale triple supermassive black hole system at $z=0.256$: SDSS J1056+5516, discovered by our systematic search for binary quasars. The system contains three strong emission-line nuclei, which are…
In this paper, the second in a series of two, we justify two important assumptions on which the result is based that in course of a galaxy merger the slingshot ejection of bound stars is sufficiently efficient to allow a supermassive black…
The coalescence of a binary black hole can be accompanied by a large gravitational recoil due to anisotropic emission of gravitational waves. A recoiling supermassive black hole (SBH) can subsequently undergo long-lived oscillations in the…
If binaries consisting of two 100 Msun black holes exist they would serve as extraordinarily powerful gravitational-wave sources, detectable to redshifts of z=2 with the advanced LIGO/Virgo ground-based detectors. Large uncertainties about…
Mergers of gas-rich galaxies lead to black hole binaries that coalesce as a result of dynamical friction on the ambient gas. Once the binary tightens to <10^3 Schwarzschild radii, its merger is driven by the emission of gravitational waves…
We study the number and interaction rates of supermassive black holes in galactic bulges as predicted by hierarchical models of galaxy formation in which the spheroidal components of galaxies are formed by mergers. In bright ellipticals,…
We discuss the gravitational wave emission and the orbital evolution of a hierarchical triple system composed of an inner binary black hole (BBH) and an outer tertiary. Depending on the kick velocity at the merger, the merged BBH could…
We present new constraints on the merging rates of planetary-mass and asteroid-mass primordial black hole binaries using limits on continuous waves(quasi-monochromatic, quasi-infinite duration signals) derived from an all-sky search for…
The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaborations have reported gravitational wave signals from more than 150 binary black holes in the fourth catalog (GWTC-4). Here, we investigate the population properties of these binary black holes using the…