Related papers: Spin alignment and differential accretion in mergi…
Despite a decade's worth of gravitational wave observation, the origin of the binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by the LIGO-VIRGO-Kagra (LVK) collaboration remains an open question. Towards assessing the feasibility and prevalence of…
We investigate the effect of black hole spin on warped or misaligned accretion discs - in particular i) whether or not the inner disc edge aligns with the black hole spin and ii) whether the disc can maintain a smooth transition between an…
We study the orbital evolution and accretion history of massive black hole (MBH) pairs in rotationally supported circumnuclear discs up to the point where MBHs form binary systems. Our simulations have high resolution in mass and space…
We study the statistical distributions of the spins of generic black-hole binaries during the inspiral and merger, as well as the distributions of the remnant mass, spin, and recoil velocity. For the inspiral regime, we start with a random…
The merger process of a binary black hole system can have a strong impact on a circumbinary disk. In the present work we study the effect of both central mass reduction (due to the energy loss through gravitational waves) and a possible…
We study the expected distribution of massive black hole (MBH) spins and its evolution with cosmic time in the context of hierarchical galaxy formation theories. Our model uses Monte Carlo realizations of the merger hierarchy in a LCDM…
The inspiral and merger of a binary black hole system generally leads to an asymmetric distribution of emitted radiation, and hence a recoil of the remnant black hole directed opposite to the net linear momentum radiated. The recoil…
Binary black holes with misaligned spins will generically induce both precession and nutation of the orbital angular momentum $\bf{L}$ about the total angular momentum $\bf{J}$. These phenomena modulate the phase and amplitude of the…
We study the inspiral of double black holes orbiting inside a massive rotationally supported gaseous disk, with masses in the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) window of detectability. Using high-resolution SPH simulations, we…
We perform numerical simulations of black-hole binaries to study the exchange of spin and orbital angular momentum during the last, highly nonlinear, stages of the coalescence process. To calculate the transfer of angular momentum from…
We study the spin dynamics of individual black holes in a binary system. In particular we focus on the polar precession of spins and the possibility of a complete flip of spins with respect to the orbital plane. We perform a full numerical…
Binary black-hole systems with spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum are of special interest as they may be the preferred end-state of the inspiral of generic supermassive binary black-hole systems. In view of this, we have…
Supermassive black holes (BH) accrete gas from their surroundings and coalesce with companions during galaxy mergers, and both processes change the BH mass and spin. By means of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations of galaxies, either…
We review recent works on the dynamics of circumbinary accretion, including time variability, angular momentum transfer between the disk and the binary, and the secular evolution of accreting binaries. These dynamics can impact stellar…
The complex astrophysical processes leading to the formation of binary black holes and their eventual merger are imprinted on the spins of the individual black holes. We revisit the astrophysical distribution of those spins based on…
Orbital eccentricity and spin precession are precious observables to infer the formation history of binary black holes with gravitational-wave data. We present a post-Newtonian, multi-timescale analysis of the binary dynamics able to…
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…
Accretion in the nuclei of active galaxies may occur chaotically. This can produce accretion discs which are counter-rotating or strongly misaligned with respect to the spin of the central supermassive black hole (SMBH), or the axis of a…
We explore the hardening of a massive black hole binary embedded in a circum-binary gas disc when the binary and the gas are coplanar and the gas is counter-rotating. The secondary black hole, revolving in the direction opposite to the gas,…
As a black hole in a binary spirals in gradually from large separation, energy and angular momentum flow not only to infinity but also into or out of the hole. In addition, the hole's horizon area increases slowly during this process. In…