Related papers: Collisionless loss-cone refilling: there is no fin…
Coalescing binary black holes experience an impulsive kick due to anisotropic emission of gravitational waves. We discuss the dynamical consequences of the recoil accompanying massive black hole mergers. Recoil velocities are sufficient to…
We revisit the phases of the pairing and sinking of BHs in galaxy mergers and circunmunclear disks in light of the results of recent simulations with massive BHs embedded in predominantly gaseous backgrounds. After a general overview we…
Spectacular breakthroughs in numerical relativity now make it possible to compute spacetime dynamics in almost complete generality, allowing us to model the coalescence and merger of binary black holes with essentially no approximations.…
Coalescing binary black holes experience a ``kick'' due to anisotropic emission of gravitational waves with an amplitude as great as 200$ km/s. We examine the orbital evolution of black holes that have been kicked from the centers of…
We perform the first nonlinear and self-consistent study of the merger and ringdown of a black hole mimicking object with stable light rings. To that end, we numerically solve the full Einstein-Klein-Gordon equations governing the head-on…
We have carried out simulations of the coalescence between two relativistic clusters of collisionless particles using a 3D numerical relativity code. We have adopted a new spatial gauge condition obtained by slightly modifying the minimum…
We present general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of merging equal-mass, spinning black holes embedded in an equatorial thin slab of magnetized gas. We evolve black holes either non-spinning, with spins aligned to the orbital…
The coalescence of compact binaries containing neutron stars or black holes is one of the most promising signals for advanced ground-based laser interferometer gravitational-wave detectors, with the first direct detections expected over the…
A Keplerian binary immersed in a bath of lighter particles hardens by ejecting them through gravitational slingshots. This process drives, for example, the evolution of supermassive black hole binaries following galaxy mergers, and has long…
After being destroyed by a binary supermassive black hole, a stellar density cusp can regrow at the center of a galaxy via energy exchange between stars moving in the gravitational field of the single, coalesced hole. We illustrate this…
The gravitational wave event GW231123, with component black hole masses lying within or above the pair-instability mass gap, poses a significant challenge to current stellar evolution models. In this work, we describe how we investigated…
We carry out numerical simulations of dissipationless major mergers of elliptical galaxies using initial galaxy models that consist of a dark matter halo and a stellar bulge with properties consistent with the observed fundamental plane. By…
Supermassive black-hole binaries are driven to merger by dynamical friction, loss-cone scattering of individual stars, disk migration, and gravitational-wave emission. Two main formation scenarios are expected. Binaries that form in…
We study the contribution of binary black hole (BH-BH) mergers from the first, metal-free stars in the Universe (Pop III) to gravitational wave detection rates. Our study combines initial conditions for the formation of Pop III stars based…
The continued operation of the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational-wave detectors is enabling the first detailed measurements of the mass, spin, and redshift distributions of the merging binary black hole population. Our present…
The observed binary black hole (BBH) mergers indicate a large Galactic progenitor population continuously evolving from large orbital separations and low gravitational wave (GW) frequencies to the final merger phase. We investigate the…
A massive black hole (MBH) consumes stars whose orbits evolve into the small phase-space volume of unstable orbits, the "loss-cone", which take them directly into the MBH, or close enough to interact strongly with it. The resulting…
An algorithm is described for evolving the phase-space density of stars or compact objects around a massive black hole at the center of a galaxy. The technique is based on numerical integration of the Fokker-Planck equation in…
We present results from a controlled numerical experiment investigating the effect of stellar density gas on the coalescence of binary black holes (BBHs) and the resulting gravitational waves (GWs). This investigation is motivated by the…
We investigate the hypothesis that the cores of elliptical galaxies and bulges are created from the binding energy liberated by the coalescence of supermassive binary black holes during galaxy mergers. Assuming that the central density…