Related papers: Spin alignment and differential accretion in mergi…
Numerical studies of gas accretion onto supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) have generally been limited to conditions where the circumbinary disk (CBD) is 10-100 times thicker than expected for disks in active galactic nuclei (AGN).…
The spin of the final black hole in the coalescence of nonspinning black holes is determined by the ``residual'' orbital angular momentum of the binary. This residual momentum consists of the orbital angular momentum that the binary is not…
Robustly measuring binary black hole spins via gravitational waves is key to understanding these systems' astrophysical origins, but remains challenging -- especially for high-mass systems, whose signals are short and dominated by the…
In vacuum, the gravitational recoil of the final black hole from the merger of two black holes depends exclusively on the mass ratio and spins of the coalescing black holes, and on the eccentricity of the binary. If matter is present,…
Recent calculations of gravitational radiation recoil generated during black-hole binary mergers have reopened the possibility that a merged binary can be ejected even from the nucleus of a massive host galaxy. Here we report the first…
Tidal torques acting on a gaseous accretion disk around a binary black hole can create a gap in the disk near the orbital radius. At late times, when the binary inspiral timescale due to gravitational wave emission becomes shorter than the…
The spins of merging binary black holes offer insights into their formation history. Recently it has been argued that in isolated binary evolution of two massive stars the firstborn black hole is slowly rotating, whilst the progenitor of…
Many studies have recently documented the orbital response of eccentric binaries accreting from thin circumbinary disks, characterizing the change in binary semi-major axis and eccentricity. We extend these calculations to include the…
The accretion disks that power active galactic nuclei (AGN) are thought to house populations of stars and compact objects; after forming binaries these compact objects may merge, begetting gravitational waves such as those detected by LIGO…
Gravitational-wave signals from black-hole binaries with non-precessing spins are described by four parameters -- each black hole's mass and spin. It has been shown that the dominant spin effects can be modeled by a \emph{single} spin…
The formation environments of merging binary black holes remain uncertain. While hierarchical assembly in dense stellar clusters has been widely explored as an explanation for black holes exceeding the stellar-mass limit, growth through gas…
Theoretical studies of angular momentum transport suggest that isolated stellar-mass black holes are born with negligible dimensionless spin magnitudes $\chi \lesssim 0.01$. However, recent gravitational-wave observations indicate $\gtrsim…
Binary black holes may form both through isolated binary evolution and through dynamical interactions in dense stellar environments. The formation channel leaves an imprint on the alignment between the black hole spins and the orbital…
Comparable-mass black-hole mergers generically result in moderate to highly spinning holes, whose spacetime curvature will significantly affect nearby matter in observable ways. We investigate how the moderate spin of a post-merger Kerr…
We study the transition from inspiral to plunge in general relativity by computing gravitational waveforms of non-spinning, equal-mass black-hole binaries. We consider three sequences of simulations, starting with a quasi-circular inspiral…
The spin of a black hole is an important quantity to study, providing a window into the processes by which a black hole was born and grew. Further, spin can be a potent energy source for powering relativistic jets and energetic particle…
Combined influence of rotation of a black hole and ambient magnetic fields creates conditions for powerful astrophysical processes of accretion and outflow of matter which are observed in many systems across the range of masses; from…
Simultaneous gravitational and electromagnetic wave observations of merging black hole binaries (BHBHs) can provide unique opportunities to study gravitation physics, accretion and cosmology. Here we perform fully general relativistic,…
When a stellar binary encounters a spinning black hole, interesting phenomena might result due to the mutual interaction between the binary spin, orbital angular momentum and the black hole spin. Here we consider such encounters between an…
The first direct detections of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes open a unique window into the binary black hole formation environment. One promising environmental signature is the angular distribution of the black hole…