Related papers: Multi-Messenger Astrophysics Opportunities with St…
Our understanding of the formation and evolution of binary black holes (BBHs) is significantly impacted by the recent discoveries made by the LIGO/Virgo collaboration. Of utmost importance is the detection of the most massive BBH system,…
Neutron star mergers, referring to both binary neutron star and neutron star black hole mergers, are the canonical multimessenger events. They have been detected across the electromagnetic spectrum, have recently been detected in…
Next-generation ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors are expected to observe millions of binary black hole mergers, a fraction of which will be strongly lensed by intervening galaxies or clusters, producing multiple images with…
Massive binary black holes form at the centre of galaxies that experience a merger episode. They are expected to coalesce into a larger black hole, following the emission of gravitational waves. Coalescing massive binary black holes are…
Population III (Pop. III) binary stars likely produced the first stellar-born binary black hole (BBH) mergers in the Universe. Here, we quantify the main sources of uncertainty for the merger rate density evolution and mass spectrum of Pop.…
We analyse the formation and evolution of the event horizon of a black hole binary merger when the black holes are charged. We find that the presence of charge influences the properties of the merger and can be useful for investigating the…
The next generation ground-based gravitational wave interferometers will possibly observe mergers of binary black holes (BBHs) and binary neutron stars (BNSs) to redshift $z\gtrsim{}10$ and $z\gtrsim{}2$, respectively. Here, we characterize…
Recent gravitational wave observations showed that binary black hole (BBH) mergers with massive components are more likely to have high effective spins. In the model of isolated binary evolution, BH spins mainly originate from the angular…
We present an empirical approach for interpreting gravitational wave signals of binary black hole mergers under the assumption that the underlying black hole population is sourced by remnants of stellar evolution. Using the observed…
On September 14 2015, the LIGO interferometers captured a gravitational wave (GW) signal from two merging black holes (BHs), opening the era of GW astrophysics. Five BH mergers have been reported so far, three of them involving massive BHs…
We explore the ability of gravitational-wave detectors to extract the redshift distribution of binary black hole (BBH) mergers. The evolution of the merger rate across redshifts $0 < z \lesssim 1$ is directly tied to the formation and…
The recent discovery of GW150914, the binary black hole merger detected by Advanced LIGO, has the potential to revolutionize observational astrophysics. But to fully utilize this new window into the universe, we must compare these new…
Stellar mass, binary black hole (BBH) mergers dominates the sources of gravitational wave (GW) events so far detected by the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA (LVK) experiment. The origin of these BBHs is unknown, and no electromagnetic (EM) counterpart has…
The origins of coalescing binary black holes (BBHs) detected by the advanced LIGO/Virgo are still under debate, and clues may be present in the joint mass-spin distribution of these merger events. Here we construct phenomenological models…
Detection of electromagnetic (EM) counterparts of pre-coalescence binaries has very important implications for our understanding of the evolution of these systems as well as the associated accretion physics. In addition, a combination of EM…
We assess models for the assembly of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of galaxies that trace their hierarchical build-up far up in the dark halo `merger tree'. We assume that the first `seed' black holes (BHs) formed in…
Theory and observations suggest that single-star evolution is not able to produce black holes (BHs) with masses in the range $3-5M_{\odot}$ and above $\sim 45M_{\odot}$, referred to as the lower mass gap (LMG) and the upper mas gap (UMG),…
The dynamical formation of stellar-mass black hole-black hole binaries has long been a promising source of gravitational waves for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Mass segregation, gravitational focusing, and…
Multi-frequency gravitational wave (GW) observations are useful probes of the formation processes of coalescing stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs). We discuss the phase drift in the GW inspiral waveform of the merging BBH caused by its…
In this {\it Letter} we calculate the fraction of highly eccentric binary black hole (BBH) mergers resulting from binary-single interactions. Using an $N$-body code that includes post-Newtonian correction terms, we show that $\gtrsim 1\%$…