Related papers: Population Estimates for Electromagnetically-Disti…
Coalescing massive black hole binaries are powerful emitters of gravitational waves, in the LISA sensitivity range for masses M_BH ~ 10^{4-7} M_sun. According to hierarchical galaxy merger models, binary black holes should form frequently,…
Supermassive black holes are commonly found in the center of galaxies and evolve with their hosts. The supermassive binary black holes (SMBBH) are thus expected to exist in close galaxy pairs, however, none has been unequivocally detected.…
We review the likely population, observational properties, and broad implications of stellar-mass black holes and ultraluminous x-ray sources. We focus on the clear empirical rules connecting accretion and outflow that have been established…
We compare all the available observational data on the redshift evolution of the total stellar mass and star formation rate density in the Universe with the mass and accretion rate density evolution of supermassive black holes, estimated…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHs) are expected to result from galaxy mergers, and thus are natural byproducts (and probes) of hierarchical structure formation in the Universe. They are also the primary expected source of…
The LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors have uncovered binary black hole systems with definitively nonzero spins, as well as systems with significant spin residing in the more massive black hole of the pair. We investigate the…
Because they are likely to accrete substantial amounts of interstellar gas, merging supermassive binary black holes are expected to be strong multimessenger sources, radiating gravitational waves, photons from thermal gas, and photons from…
Accreting black holes tend to display a characteristic dark central region called the black-hole shadow, which depends only on spacetime/observer geometry and which conveys information about the black hole's mass and spin. Conversely, the…
If supermassive black holes (BHs) are generically present in galaxy centers, and if galaxies are built up through hierarchical merging, BH binaries are at least temporary features of most galactic bulges. Observations suggest, however, that…
Galaxy mergers produce supermassive black hole binaries, which emit gravitational waves prior to their coalescence. We perform three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations to study the tidal disruption of stars by such a binary in the final…
Optical appearance of a compact binary star in the field of a supermassive black hole is modeled in a strong field regime. Expressions for the redshift, magnification coefficient and pulsar extinction time are derived. By using the vierbein…
We systematically analyzed about a terabyte of data from Galactic binary systems to characterize how these spectra change as a function of mass accretion rate. With this volume of data we are able to identify the differences in behaviour of…
Merging supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries will likely be surrounded by a circumbinary accretion disk. Close to merger, gravitational radiation-driven inspiral will happen on timescales faster than the effective viscous time at the…
We explore the formation of mass-transferring binary systems containing black holes within globular clusters. We show that it is possible to form mass-transferring black hole binaries with main sequence, giant, and white dwarf companions…
Motivated by observational searches for sub-parsec supermassive black hole binaries (SBHBs) we develop a modular analytic model to determine the likelihood for detection of SBHBs by ongoing spectroscopic surveys. The model combines the…
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…
We present the result of $N$-body simulations of dynamical evolution of triple massive blackhole (BH) systems in galactic nuclei. We found that in most cases two of the three BHs merge through gravitational wave (GW) radiation in the…
Accretion disks around active galactic nuclei are potentially unstable to star formation at large radii. We note that when the compact objects formed from some of these stars spiral into the central supermassive black hole, there is no…
We show that the existence of clouds of ultralight particles surrounding black holes during their cosmological history as members of a binary system can leave a measurable imprint on the distribution of masses and orbital eccentricities…
The two binary black-hole (BBH) coalescences detected by LIGO, GW150914 and GW151226, were relatively nearby sources, with a redshift of ~0.1. As the sensitivity of Advanced LIGO and Virgo increases in the next few years, they will…