Related papers: What does a binary black hole merger look like?
The growing number of binary black hole mergers detected through gravitational waves offers unprecedented insight into their underlying population, yet their astrophysical formation channels remain unresolved. We present a new method to…
The high-mass ($M \gtrsim 30 M_\odot$) black holes (BHs) from the gravitational-wave (GW) observations of LIGO and Virgo came as a surprise to many astronomers. While the collapse of metal-poor massive stars could produce such BHs,…
A numerical solution scheme for the Einstein field equations based on generalized harmonic coordinates is described, focusing on details not provided before in the literature and that are of particular relevance to the binary black hole…
Alternative theories of gravity predict up to six distinct polarization modes for gravitational waves. Strong gravitational lensing of gravitational waves allows us to probe the polarization content of these signals by effectively…
When galaxies collide, dynamical friction drives their central supermassive black holes close enought to each other such that gravitational radiation becomes the leading dissipative effect. Gravitational radiation takes away energy,…
In the cold dark matter scenario, dark matter halos are assembled hierarchically from smaller subunits. Some of these subunits are disrupted during the merging process, whereas others survive temporarily in the form of subhalos. A…
In this thesis we study aspects of strong-field gravitational lensing by black holes in general relativity, with a particular focus on the role of integrability and chaos in geodesic motion. We first investigate binary black hole shadows…
Gravitational microlensing is unique in detecting binary black (BH) holes with wide (a few au) separations. Models predict that about $1\%$ of microlensing binaries should be due to binary BHs, and yet zero has been robustly identified.…
Gravitational waves from binary black hole pairs have emerged as an important observational tool in current times. The energy of the BH - BH binary pair is radiated in the form of gravitational waves and to compensate for that energy,…
Although most gravitational wave events are claimed to be mergers of unusually massive, $25-65M_\odot$, black holes, it is now clear that 20\% of all reported events comprise modest mass black holes, $5-15M_\odot$, like the stellar black…
Multiple approaches are required to study the evolution of black-hole binaries. While the post-Newtonian approximation is sufficient to describe the early inspiral (even from infinitely large orbital separation), only numerical relativity…
Merging supermassive black hole binaries is expected as a consequence of galaxy mergers, yet the detailed evolution path and underlying merging mechanisms of these binaries are still subject to large theoretical uncertainties. In this work,…
The merger rate of black hole binaries inferred from the detections in the first Advanced LIGO science run, implies that a stochastic background produced by a cosmological population of mergers will likely mask the primordial…
Galaxy mergers produce supermassive black hole binaries, which emit gravitational waves prior to their coalescence. We perform three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations to study the tidal disruption of stars by such a binary in the final…
A remarkable series of breakthroughs in numerical relativity modeling of black hole binary mergers has occurred over the past few years. This paper provides a general overview of these exciting developments, focusing on recent progress in…
We present results of numerical simulations of sequences of binary-single scattering events of black holes in dense stellar environments. The simulations cover a wide range of mass ratios from equal mass objects to 1000:10:10 solar masses…
Black holes acting as gravitational lenses produce, besides the primary and secondary weak field images, two infinite sets of relativistic images. These images can be studied using the strong field limit, an analytic method based on a…
We describe early success in the evolution of binary black hole spacetimes with a numerical code based on a generalization of harmonic coordinates. Indications are that with sufficient resolution this scheme is capable of evolving binary…
In this work, we study the gravitational lensing by a Lorentz-violating (LV) black hole inspired by the recent contribution [1]. Explicitly, we concentrate on a specific application: we perform the computation of gravitational lensing…
The properties of precessing, coalescing binary black holes are presently inferred through comparison with two approximate models of compact binary coalescence. In this work we show these two models often disagree substantially when…