English
Related papers

Related papers: AGN (and other) astrophysics with Gravitational Wa…

200 papers

The astrophysical origin of gravitational wave (GW) transients is a timely open question in the wake of discoveries by LIGO/Virgo. In active galactic nuclei (AGNs), binaries form and evolve efficiently by interaction with a dense population…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-01-27 Hiromichi Tagawa , Bence Kocsis , Zoltan Haiman , Imre Bartos , Kazuyuki Omukai , Johan Samsing

The detection of gravitational waves from the merger of binary black holes by the LIGO Collaboration has opened a new window to astrophysics. With the sensitivities of ground based detectors in the coming years we can only detect the local…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-06-28 Ilias Cholis

The accretion disks of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising environments for producing binary black hole (BBH) mergers, which have been detected via gravitational waves (GW) with LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK). BBH mergers embedded in AGN…

The dense and dynamic environments within active galactic nuclei (AGN) accretion disks may serve as prolific birthplaces for binary black holes (BBHs) and one possible origin for some of the BBHs detected by gravitational-wave (GW)…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-10-31 Samson H. W. Leong , Justin Janquart , Aditya Kumar Sharma , Paul Martens , Parameswaran Ajith , Otto A. Hannuksela

The origin of the black hole mergers detected by LIGO and Virgo remains an open question. While the unusual mass and spin of a few events constrain their possible astrophysical formation mechanisms, it is difficult to classify the bulk of…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2021-10-27 V. Gayathri , Y. Yang , H. Tagawa , Z. Haiman , I. Bartos

Gravitational waves from neutron star mergers have long been considered a promising way to measure the Hubble constant, $H_0$, which describes the local expansion rate of the universe. While black hole mergers are more abundantly observed,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-06-21 Lucas M. B. Alves , Andrew G. Sullivan , Yang Yang , Gayathri V. , Zsuzsa Marka , Szabolcs Marka , Imre Bartos

We explore the evolution of stellar mass black hole binaries (BHBs) which are formed in the self-gravitating disks of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Hardening due to three-body scattering and gaseous drag are effective mechanisms that reduce…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-01-03 Nicholas C. Stone , Brian D. Metzger , Zoltan Haiman

The origins of the stellar-mass black hole mergers discovered by LIGO/Virgo are still unknown. Here we show that, if migration traps develop in the \add{accretion} disks of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) and promote the mergers of their…

Accretion discs around super-massive black holes (SMBH) not only power active galactic nuclei (AGNs), but also host single and binary embedded stellar-mass black holes (EBHs) that grow rapidly from gas accretion. The merger of these EBHs…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-04-12 Yi-Xian Chen , Douglas N. C. Lin

Binary black hole (BBH) mergers are the primary sources of gravitational wave (GW) events detected by LIGO/Virgo. Binary black holes embedded in the accretion discs of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are possible candidates for such GW events.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-07-22 W. Ishibashi , M. Gröbner

The Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) channel for the formation of binary black hole (BBH) mergers has been previously studied as a potential formation channel for the merging compact binaries observed by the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA (LVK) scientific…

The detection of gravitational waves from merging black holes with masses $\sim\,80-150\,\mathrm{M_\odot}$ suggests that some proportion of black hole binary systems form hierarchically in dense astrophysical environments, as most stellar…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2025-10-08 Jordan Moncrieff , Fiona Panther

Stellar-mass binary black hole (BBH) mergers occurring within the disks of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising sources for gravitational waves detectable by the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA (LVK) interferometers. Some of these events have…

Active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks may be important sites of binary black hole (BBH) mergers. Here we show via numerical experiments with the high-accuracy, high precision code {\tt SpaceHub} that broken symmetry in dynamical encounters in…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-01-05 Yihan Wang , Barry McKernan , Saavik Ford , Rosalba Perna , Nathan W. C. Leigh , Mordecai-Mark Mac Low

The astrophysical origin of the over 90 compact binary mergers discovered by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories is an open question. While the unusual mass and spin of some of the discovered objects constrain progenitor…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2023-03-29 V. Gayathri , Daniel Wysocki , Y. Yang , R. O Shaughnessy , Z. Haiman , H. Tagawa , I. Bartos

Stellar mass black holes (BHs) are expected to segregate and form a steep density cusp around supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei. We follow the evolution of a multi-mass system of BHs and stars by numerically integrating…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Ryan M. O'Leary , Bence Kocsis , Abraham Loeb

We show that Laser Interferometer Space Antenna can uniquely identify the sites of intermediate-mass binary black hole (IMBBH) mergers if they occur in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) disks with a gas density $\rho\geq10^{-12} \, {\rm g/cc}$…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-05-16 Poulami Dutta Roy , Parthapratim Mahapatra , Anuradha Samajdar , K. G. Arun

The origin of stellar-mass black hole mergers discovered through gravitational waves is being widely debated. Mergers in the disks of active galactic nuclei (AGN) represent a promising source of origin, with possible observational clues in…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-06-14 Hiromichi Tagawa , Shigeo S. Kimura , Zoltán Haiman , Rosalba Perna , Imre Bartos

We study the production of primordial black hole (PBH) binaries and the resulting merger rate, accounting for an extended PBH mass function and the possibility of a clustered spatial distribution. Under the hypothesis that the gravitational…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2018-05-24 Martti Raidal , Ville Vaskonen , Hardi Veermäe

The accretion disks of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising locations for the merger of compact objects detected by gravitational wave (GW) observatories. Embedded within a baryon-rich, high density environment, mergers within AGN are…