Related papers: Revealing the Galactic Population of BHs
Recent non-detection of gravitational-wave backgrounds from pulsar timing arrays casts further uncertainty on the evolution of supermassive black hole binaries. We study the capabilities of current gravitational-wave observatories to detect…
Radio observations of strongly lensed objects are valuable as cosmological probes. Lensed radio sources have proven difficult to identify in large part due to the limited depth and angular resolution of the previous generation of radio sky…
Binary stars have long been considered to play a crucial role in globular cluster evolution, and offer the advantages of studying systems at the same, well-determined distances. However, early search attempts were consistently thwarted by…
The observation of gravitational wave signals from binary black hole mergers has established the field of gravitational wave astronomy. It is expected that future networks of gravitational wave detectors will possess great potential in…
Multi-epoch radio-interferometric observations of young stellar objects can be used to measure their displacement over the celestial sphere with a level of precision that currently cannot be attained at any other wavelength. In particular,…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) should form frequently in galactic nuclei as a result of galaxy mergers. At sub-parsec separations, binaries become strong sources of low-frequency gravitational waves (GWs), targeted by Pulsar…
New radio data are presented for the clusters A401, A545, A754, A1914, A2219 and A2390, where the presence of diffuse radio emission was suggested from the images of the NRAO VLA Sky Survey. Sensitive images of these clusters, obtained with…
The extraordinary astrometric accuracy of radio interferometry creates an important and unique opportunity for the discovery and characterization of exo-planets. Currently, the Very Long Baseline Array can routinely achieve better than 100…
Massive black holes (MBHs) exist in the Galactic center (GC) and other nearby galactic nuclei. As natural outcome of galaxy mergers, some MBHs may have a black hole (BH) companion. In this paper, assuming that the MBHs in the GC and some…
We explore the usefulness of future gravitational microlensing surveys in the study of binary properties such as the binary fraction and the distributions of binary separation and mass ratio by using the binary sample detectable through a…
A high optical depth to gravitational microlensing towards the galactic bulge is consistent with current models of the galactic bar. The low optical depth towards the LMC can probably be accounted for by the ordinary stars in our galaxy and…
Blurred reflection features are commonly observed in the X-ray spectra of accreting black holes. In the presence of high-quality data and with the correct astrophysical model, X-ray reflection spectroscopy is a powerful tool to probe the…
All stellar mass black holes have hitherto been identified by X-rays emitted by gas that is accreting onto the black hole from a companion star. These systems are all binaries with black holes below 30 M$_{\odot}$$^{1-4}$. Theory predicts,…
Supermassive black holes are commonly found in the center of galaxies and evolve with their hosts. The supermassive binary black holes (SMBBH) are thus expected to exist in close galaxy pairs, however, none has been unequivocally detected.…
We present a technique-led review of the progression of precise radio astrometry, from the first demonstrations, half a century ago, until to date and into the future. We cover the developments that have been fundamental to allow high…
Electromagnetic observations over the last 15 years have yielded a growing appreciation for the importance of supermassive black holes (SMBH) to the evolution of galaxies, and for the intricacies of dynamical interactions in our own…
The merger of two galaxies, each hosting a supermassive black hole (SMBH) of mass $10^6$\,M$_{\odot}$ or more, could yield a bound SMBH binary. For the early-type galaxy NGC\,4472, we study how astrometry with a next-generation Very Large…
The observation of gravitational-waves from merging supermassive black holes will be transformative: the detection of a low-frequency gravitational-wave background can tell us if and how supermassive black holes merge, inform our knowledge…
Radio observations with Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) provide the highest resolution in astronomy. Combining earth-bound with space-based telescopes and advancing the observations to mm-wavelengths increases the resolution even…
The capabilities of the Global mm-VLBI Array are summarized and demonstrated through actual images from our monitoring of extragalactic radio jets. This sensitive 3mm-VLBI interferometer is able to provide images of up to 50 microarcseconds…