Related papers: A feasibility study on the photometric detection o…
We present a novel strategy to uncover the Galactic population of quiescent black holes (BHs). This is based on a new concept, the photometric mass function (PMF), which opens up the possibility of an efficient identification of dynamical…
Compact objects undergoing mass transfer exhibit significant (and double-peaked) $H_{\alpha}$ emission lines. Recently, new methods have been developed to identify black hole X-ray binaries (BHXBs) and calculate their systematic parameters…
Among the sample of Galactic transient X-ray binaries (SXTs) discovered to date, about 70 have been proposed as likely candidates to host a black hole. Yet, only 19 have been dynamically confirmed. Such a reliable confirmation requires…
We review the properties of 40 X-ray binaries that contain either a confirmed black hole or a black hole candidate. After discussing briefly the significance of these Galactic black holes to both astronomy and physics, we present basic data…
Understanding the connection between the properties of black holes (BHs) and their progenitors is interesting in many branches of astrophysics. Discovering BHs in detached orbits with luminous companions (LCs) promises to help create this…
We review the recent multifrequency studies of galactic black hole binaries, aiming at revealing the underlying emission processes and physical properties in these systems. The optical and infrared observations are important for determining…
Quiescent black hole X-ray binaries (X-ray luminosities <1e34 erg/s) are believed to be fed by hot accretion flows that launch compact, relativistic jets. However, due to their low luminosities, quiescent jets have been detected in the…
We have conducted a deep radio survey of a sample of black hole X-ray binaries in the hard and quiescent states, to determine whether any systems were sufficiently bright for astrometric follow-up with high-sensitivity very long baseline…
The formation and growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) remain a significant unsolved problem in astrophysics, particularly in the low-mass regime, where observations are sparse. The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), with its…
We report the discovery of three low-mass black hole candidates residing in the centers of low-mass galaxies at z<0.3 in the Chandra Deep Field - South Survey. These black holes are initially identified as candidate active galactic nuclei…
We study the reliability of dark-matter halo detections with three different linear filters applied to weak-lensing data. We use ray-tracing in the multiple lens-plane approximation through a large cosmological simulation to construct…
In X-ray binaries, several percent of the compact object luminosity is intercepted by the surface of the normal companion and re-radiated through Compton reflection and the K-fluorescence. This reflected emission follows the variability of…
I discuss some of what is known and unknown about the behavior of black hole binary systems in the quiescent accretion state. Quiescence is important for several reasons: 1) the dominance of the companion star in the optical and IR…
The origin of Galactic cosmic rays (CRs) is unknown even though they have traditionally been connected to supernovae based on energetic arguments. In the past decades, Galactic black holes in X-ray binaries (BHXBs) have been proposed as…
The events detected by the LIGO Virgo KAGRA collaboration over a period of 10 years have yielded a treasure trove of signals from compact binary coalescences. None of these events have shown a confident signature of eccentricity. With…
Microlensing is one of the most promising tools for discovering stellar-mass black holes (BHs) in the Milky Way because it allows us to probe dark or faint celestial compact objects. While the existence of stellar-mass BHs has been…
We present near-infrared and optical imaging of fifteen candidate black hole X-ray binaries. In addition to quiescent observations for all sources, we also observed two of these sources (IGR J17451-3022 and XTE J1818-245) in outburst. We…
Binary black hole (BBH) mergers found by the LIGO and Virgo detectors are of immense scientific interest to the astrophysics community, but are considered unlikely to be sources of electromagnetic emission. To test whether they have rapidly…
The community may be on the verge of detecting low-frequency gravitational waves from massive black hole binaries (MBHBs), but no examples of binary active galactic nuclei (AGN) have been confirmed. Because MBHBs are intrinsically rare, the…
We summarize the quiescent X-ray observations of transient low-mass X-ray binaries. These observations show that, in quiescence, binaries containing black holes are fainter than those containing neutron stars. This has triggered a number of…