Related papers: Detecting intermediate mass black holes in globula…
Recent observations of globular clusters (GCs) provide evidence that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) may not be universal, suggesting specifically that the IMF grows increasingly top-heavy with decreasing metallicity and increasing…
Intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) have masses between the $10^2\!-\!10^6$ M$_\odot$ and are key to our understanding of the formation of massive black holes. The known population of IMBH remains small, with a few hundred candidates and…
The direct observation of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBH) populations would not only strengthen the possible evolutionary link between stellar and supermassive black holes, but unveil the details of the pair-instability mechanism and…
We present results of a series of Monte Carlo simulations investigating the imprint of a central intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) on the structure of a globular cluster. We investigate the three-dimensional and projected density…
We have followed the evolution of multi-mass star clusters containing massive central black holes through collisional N-body simulations done on GRAPE6. Each cluster is composed of between 16,384 to 131,072 stars together with a black hole…
Spectroscopic and photometric observations show that many globular clusters host multiple stellar populations, challenging the common paradigm that globular clusters are "simple stellar populations" composed of stars of uniform age and…
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), with masses in the range $100-10^{6}$ M$_{\odot}$, are the link between stellar-mass BHs and supermassive BHs (SMBHs). They are thought to be the seeds from which SMBHs grow, which would explain the…
Even though the existence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs, black holes with masses ranging between $10^{2-4}\,M_{\odot}$) has not yet been corroborated observationally, these objects are of high interest for astrophysics. Our…
We investigate the evolution of intermediate-mass (IMBHs), stellar (BHs) and binary black holes (BHBs), deposited near a supermassive black hole (SMBH) by a population of massive star clusters. Stellar BHs rapidly segregate around the SMBH,…
The formation of supermassive black holes at high redshift still remains a puzzle to astronomers. Their growth becomes reasonable only when starting from a massive seed black hole with mass of the order of 10^2 - 10^5 M_SUN.…
Gravitational waves emitted by merging black holes between $\sim 10^4-10^7~M_\odot$ will be detectable by the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) with signal-to-noise ratios of several hundred out to redshift 20. Supermassive black…
Stellar-mass and supermassive black holes abound in the Universe, whereas intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) of ~10^2-10^5 solar masses in between are largely missing observationally, with few cases found only. Here we report the…
The most massive galaxies in the Universe also host the largest supermassive black holes (SMBHs), with masses of $10^9 \: \mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ and above. During their hierarchical assembly, these galaxies have experienced only a few major…
Stellar-mass black holes (BHs) represent the natural end states of massive stars. It is estimated that $10^8$ stellar-mass BHs are present in the Milky Way galaxy, a significant fraction of which are expected to be isolated. Despite their…
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) span the approximate mass range $100$--$10^5\,M_\odot$, between black holes (BHs) formed by stellar collapse and the supermassive BHs at the centers of galaxies. Mergers of IMBH binaries are the most…
We describe ongoing searches for intermediate-mass black holes with M_BH ~ 100-10^5 M_sun. We review a range of search mechanisms, both dynamical and those that rely on accretion signatures. We find that dynamical and accretion signatures…
For a sample of nine Galactic globular clusters we measured the inner kinematic profiles with integral-field spectroscopy that we combined with existing outer kinematic measurements and HST luminosity profiles. With this information we are…
Observations and high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations indicate that massive star clusters assemble hierarchically from sub-clusters with a universal power-law cluster mass function. We study the consequences of such assembly for the…
For galaxies hosting supermassive black holes (SMBHs), it has been observed that the mass of the central black hole (M_BH) tightly correlates with the effective or central velocity dispersion (sigma) of the host galaxy. The origin of this…
Intermediate mass ratio inspirals (IMRIs) of binary black holes with mass ratios $10^{-4}\lesssim q \lesssim 0.1$ are astrophysically interesting sources of gravitational waves. Mergers of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) with…