Related papers: On the possible electromagnetic manifestations of …
The association of an electromagnetic signal with the merger of a pair of supermassive black holes would have many important implications. For example, it would provide new information about gas and magnetic field interactions in dynamical…
We model the spectra and light curves of circumbinary accretion disks during the time after the central black holes merge. The most immediate effect of this merger is the dissipation of energy in the outer regions of the disk due to the…
The production site of heavy r-process elements, such as Gold and Uranium, is uncertain. Neutron star mergers are the only astrophysical phenomenon in which we have witnessed their formation. However, the amount of heavy elements resulting…
We study the evolution of disk accretion during the merger of supermassive black hole binaries in galactic nuclei. In hierarchical galaxy formation models, the most common binaries are likely to arise from minor galactic mergers, and have…
The final merger of a pair of massive black holes in a galactic nucleus is compelled by gravitational radiation. Gravitational waves from the mergers of black holes of masses (10^5-10^7)(1+z)^{-1} Msun at redshifts of 1-20 will be readily…
We report results from simulations in general relativity of magnetized disks accreting onto merging black hole binaries, starting from relaxed disk initial data. The simulations feature an effective, rapid radiative cooling scheme as a…
Supermassive black holes presumably grow through numerous mergers throughout cosmic time. During each merger, supermassive black hole binaries are surrounded by a circumbinary accretion disk that imposes a significant (~1e4 G for a binary…
Although recent work in numerical relativity has made tremendous strides in quantifying the gravitational wave luminosity of black hole mergers, very little is known about the electromagnetic luminosity that might occur in immediate…
Motivated by recent discoveries of X-ray quasi-periodic eruptions, we revisit the collision of a black hole and an accretion disk. Assuming that they are orbiting a supermassive black hole in orthogonal orbits, we perform a general…
The merger of compact binaries, especially black holes and neutron stars, is frequently invoked to explain gamma-ray bursts (GRB's). In this paper, we present three dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of the relatively neglected mergers…
We calculate the observable signature of a black hole accretion disk with a gap or hole created by a secondary black hole embedded in the disk. We find that for an interesting range of parameters of black hole masses (~10^6 to 10^9 solar…
Mergers of supermassive black hole binaries release peak power of up to ~10^57 erg/s in gravitational waves (GWs). As the GWs propagate through ambient gas, they induce shear and a small fraction of their power is dissipated through…
The coalescence of supermassive black hole binaries occurs via the emission of gravitational waves, that can impart a substantial recoil to the merged black hole. We consider the energy dissipation, that results if the recoiling black hole…
We study accretion rates during the gravitational wave-driven merger of a binary supermassive black hole embedded in an accretion disc, formed by gas driven to the centre of the galaxy. We use 3D simulations performed with PHANTOM, a…
A circumbinary disc around a pair of merging stellar-mass black holes may be shocked and heated during the recoil of the merged hole, causing a near-simultaneous electromagnetic counterpart to the gravitational wave event. The shocks occur…
It is often assumed that gravitational wave (GW) events resulting from the merger of stellar-mass black holes are unlikely to produce electromagnetic (EM) counterparts. We point out that the progenitor binary has probably shed a mass…
Black hole-neutron star (BH-NS) mergers are expected to emit gravitational-wave (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) counterparts when the NS is tidally disrupted or plunges into the BH. Recently, GW 200105 and GW200115 were claimed as originating…
Recent studies have indicated that the emission of gravitational waves at the merger of two black holes gives a kick to the final black hole. If the supermassive black hole at the center of a disk galaxy is kicked but the velocity is not…
The Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (aLIGO) has detected direct signals of gravitational waves (GWs) from GW150914. The event was a merger of binary black holes whose masses are $36^{+5}_{-4}M_{\odot}$ and…
While supermassive binary black holes inspiral toward merger they may also experience significant accretion of matter from a surrounding disk. We study the dynamics of this system, simultaneously describing the evolving spacetime and…