Related papers: Impulsive Electromagnetic Emission near a Black Ho…
We introduce a new technique to search for gravitational wave events from compact binary mergers that produce a clear signal only in a single gravitational wave detector, and marginal signals in other detectors. Such a situation can arise…
Retrolensing is a gravitational lensing effect in which light emitted by a background source is deflected by a black hole and redirected toward the observer after undergoing nearly complete loops around the black hole. In this context, we…
Light rays passing very close to a black hole may experience very strong deviations. Two geometries were separately considered in the recent literature: a source behind the black hole (standard gravitational lensing); a source in front of…
As a powerful source of gravitational waves (GW), a supermassive black hole (SMBH) merger may be accompanied by a relativistic jet that leads to detectable electromagnetic (EM) emission. We model the propagation of post-merger jets inside a…
We propose a new formation channel for intermediate mass black hole (IMBH) binaries via globular cluster collisions in the Galactic disc. Using numerical simulations, we show that the IMBHs form a tight binary that enters the gravitational…
Gravitational waves (GWs) from the inspiral of compact remnants (CRs) into massive black holes (MBHs) will be observable to cosmological distances. While a CR spirals in, 2-body scattering by field stars may cause it to fall into the MBH…
Gravitational-wave (GW) scattering in strong gravitational fields is a central problem in GW lensing. Yet, conventional treatments based on asymptotic expansions suffer from divergences and become unreliable near the optical axis. In this…
A large primordial density perturbation of the Hubble scale will gravitationally collapse, generating an outgoing sound shell, whether or not a primordial black hole (PBH) is formed. In this Letter, we report a hybrid numerical analysis of…
We search for signatures of gravitational lensing in the binary black hole events detected by Advanced LIGO and Virgo during their first two observational runs. In particular, we look for three effects: 1) evidence of lensing magnification…
Observations suggest that star clusters often form in binaries or larger bound groups. Therefore, mergers between two clusters are likely to occur. If these clusters both harbor an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH; 10^{2-4} Msun) in their…
In the dense regions of star clusters, close encounters with black holes (BHs) can occur giving rise to a new class of gravitational-wave (GW) signals. Binary-single encounters between three BHs are expected to dominate the rate of signals…
Motivated by the preponderance of so-called "heavy black holes" in the binary black hole (BBH) gravitational wave (GW) detections to date, and the role that gravitational lensing continues to play in discovering new galaxy populations, we…
We examine the possibility of observing gravitational lensing in the weak deflection regime by the supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy M31. This black hole is significantly more massive than the black hole in the center of…
Efforts to detect gravitational waves by timing an array of pulsars have focused traditionally on stationary gravitational waves: e.g., stochastic or periodic signals. Gravitational wave bursts --- signals whose duration is much shorter…
The theory of Hawking radiation can be tested in laboratory analogues of black holes. We use light pulses in nonlinear fiber optics to establish artificial event horizons. Each pulse generates a moving perturbation of the refractive index…
We show that the high-energy emission of GRBs originates in the "inner engine": a Kerr black hole (BH) surrounded by matter and a magnetic field $B_0$. It radiates a sequence of discrete events of particle acceleration, each of energy…
In the last few years before merger, supermassive black hole binaries will rapidly inspiral and precess in a magnetic field imposed by a surrounding circumbinary disk. Multiple simulations suggest this relative motion will convert some of…
Now that LIGO has revealed the existence of a large number of binary black holes, identifying their origin becomes an important challenge. They might originate in more isolated regions of the galaxy or alternatively they might reside in…
Sub-parsec supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries are expected to be common in active galactic nuclei (AGN), as a result of the hierarchical build-up of galaxies via mergers. While direct evidence for these compact binaries is lacking, a…
Gravitational waves can be focussed by the gravity of an intervening galaxy, just like light, thereby magnifying binary merging events in the far Universe. High magnification by galaxies is found to be responsible for the brightest sources…