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Globular clusters (GCs) are crucial for studying stellar dynamics and galactic structure, yet precise measurements of their distances and masses are often limited by uncertainties in electromagnetic (EM) observations. We present a novel…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-08-07 Jie Wu , Yao Xiao , Mengfei Sun , Jin Li

We describe a case study of translational research, applying interpretability techniques developed for computer vision to machine learning models used to search for and find gravitational waves. The models we study are trained to detect…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2022-02-16 Mohammadtaher Safarzadeh , Asad Khan , E. A. Huerta , Martin Wattenberg

We argue that globular clusters (GCs) are good candidates for gravitational lenses in explaining quasar-galaxy associations. The catalog of associations (Bukhmastova 2001) compiled from the LEDA catalog of galaxies (Paturel 1997) and from…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-07 Yu. L. Bukhmastova

The dynamical processing of black holes in the dense cores of globular clusters (GCs), makes them efficient factories for producing binary black holes (BBHs). Here we explore the population of BBHs that form dynamically in GCs and may be…

The growing number of binary black hole mergers detected through gravitational waves offers unprecedented insight into their underlying population, yet their astrophysical formation channels remain unresolved. We present a new method to…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-10-23 William J. Smith , Krystal Ruiz-Rocha , Kelly Holley-Bockelmann , Michela Mapelli , Karan Jani

Nantais et al. used the Hubble Space Telescope to localize probable globular clusters (GCs) in M81, a spiral galaxy at a distance of 3.63 Mpc. Theory predicts that GCs can host intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) with masses M_BH \sim 100…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2016-07-06 J. M. Wrobel , J. C. A. Miller-Jones , M. J. Middleton

In this paper, the third in a series illustrating the power of generalized linear models (GLMs) for the astronomical community, we elucidate the potential of the class of GLMs which handles count data. The size of a galaxy's globular…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2019-08-13 R. S. de Souza , J. M. Hilbe , B. Buelens , J. D. Riggs , E. Cameron , E. E. O. Ishida , A. L. Chies-Santos , M. Killedar

While elementary particles are the favored candidate for the elusive dark matter, primordial black holes (PBHs) have also been considered to fill that role. Gravitational microlensing is a very well-suited tool to detect and measure the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2024-09-10 Sven Heydenreich , Evencio Mediavilla , Jorge Jiménez-Vicente , Héctor Vives-Arias , Jose A. Muñoz

There is compelling evidence that black holes (BHs) in cluster centers vigorously interact with their surroundings, indicating that any realistic model of cluster formation needs to account for these processes. Here we use high-resolution…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-14 Ewald Puchwein , Debora Sijacki , Volker Springel

In the last few years, machine learning techniques, in particular convolutional neural networks, have been investigated as a method to replace or complement traditional matched filtering techniques that are used to detect the…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2019-10-02 Timothy D. Gebhard , Niki Kilbertus , Ian Harry , Bernhard Schölkopf

We present axisymmetric, orbit superposition models for 12 galaxies using data taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and ground-based observatories. In each galaxy, we detect a central black hole (BH) and measure its mass to…

Within scientific and real life problems, classification is a typical case of extremely complex tasks in data-driven scenarios, especially if approached with traditional techniques. Machine Learning supervised and unsupervised paradigms,…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2018-07-13 Giuseppe Angora , Massimo Brescia , Stefano Cavuoti , Giuseppe Riccio , Maurizio Paolillo , Thomas H. Puzia

The presence or absence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) at the centre of Milky Way globular clusters (GCs) is still an open question. This is either due to observational restrictions or limitations in the dynamical modelling…

The motion of the center of mass of a coalescing binary black hole (BBH) in a gravitational potential imprints a line-of-sight acceleration (LOSA) onto the emitted gravitational wave (GW) signal. The acceleration could be sufficiently large…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-02-01 Avinash Tiwari , Aditya Vijaykumar , Shasvath J. Kapadia , Giacomo Fragione , Sourav Chatterjee

Only a small fraction of local galaxies harbor an accreting black hole, classified as an active galactic nucleus (AGN). However, many stellar systems are plausibly expected to host black holes, from globular clusters to nuclear star…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2015-05-20 Marta Volonteri , Massimo Dotti , Duncan Campbell , Mario Mateo

Low-frequency gravitational wave experiments such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna and pulsar timing arrays are expected to detect individual massive black hole (MBH) binaries and mergers. However, secure methods of identifying the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-12-09 Jaeden Bardati , John J. Ruan , Daryl Haggard , Michael Tremmel

The existence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) in globular clusters (GCs) remains a crucial problem. Searching IMBHs in GCs reveals a discrepancy between radio observations and dynamical modelings: the upper mass limits constrained…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2015-06-16 Mou-Yuan Sun , Ya-Ling Jin , Wei-Min Gu , Tong Liu , Da-Bin Lin , Ju-Fu Lu

We present the mass--spin diagram for classifying black holes and studying their formation pathways providing an analogue to the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. This allows for black hole evolutionary tracks as a function of redshift,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-25 Nathan Steinle , Samar Safi-Harb

The dense environment of globular clusters (GCs) can facilitate the formation of binary black holes (BBHs), some of which can merge with gravitational waves (GW) within the age of the Universe. We have performed a survey of Monte-Carlo…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-08-22 Jongsuk Hong , Enrico Vesperini , Abbas Askar , Mirek Giersz , Magdalena Szkudlarek , Tomasz Bulik

Galaxies grow and evolve in dark matter halos. Because dark matter is not visible, galaxies' halo masses ($\rm{M}_{\rm{halo}}$) must be inferred indirectly. We present a graph neural network (GNN) model for predicting $\rm{M}_{\rm{halo}}$…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2024-11-20 Nikhil Garuda , John F. Wu , Dylan Nelson , Annalisa Pillepich