Related papers: Astrophysical Black Holes
The existence of exact solutions which represent a lattice of black holes at a scalar-field-dominated cosmological bounce suggests that black holes could persist through successive eras of a cyclic cosmology. Here we explore some remarkable…
We present the results of a study of a statistically significant sample of galaxies which clearly demonstrate that supermassive black holes are generically present in all morphological types. Our analysis is based on the quantitative…
The supermassive black holes observed at the centers of almost all present-day galaxies, had a profound impact on their environment. I highlight the principle of self-regulation, by which supermassive black holes grow until they release…
The past 10 years have witnessed a change of perspective in the way astrophysicists think about massive black holes (MBHs), which are now considered to have a major role in the evolution of galaxies. This appreciation was driven by the…
The supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy can be weighed, in rare but realistic cases, when the galaxy acts as a strong gravitational lens. The central image that should be produced by the lens is either destroyed or…
The origin of high velocity stars observed in the halo of our Galaxy is still unclear. In this work we test the hypothesis, raised by results of recent high precision $N$-body simulations, of strong acceleration of stars belonging to a…
Any observer outside black holes cannot detect any physical signal produced by the black holes themselves, since, by definition, the black holes are not located in the causal past of the outside observer. In fact, what we regard as black…
We review the current state of dynamical modeling for galaxies in terms of being able to measure both the central black hole mass and stellar orbital structure. Both of these must be known adequately to measure either property. The current…
This review attempts to describe developments in the fields of quasar and quasar host galaxies in the past five. In this time period, the Sloan and 2dF quasar surveys have added several tens of thousands of quasars, with Sloan quasars being…
One of the key open questions in cosmology today pertains to understanding when, where and how super massive black holes form, while it is clear that mergers likely play a significant role in the growth cycles of black holes, how…
While the energy of the universe has been established to be about 0.04 baryons, 0.24 dark matter and 0.72 dark energy, the cosmological entropy is almost entirely, about $(1 - 10^{-15})$, from black holes and only $10^{-15}$ from everything…
If the stellar population of the bulge contains black holes formed in the final core collapse of ordinary stars with M \ga 30 M_{\odot}, then about 25,000 stellar mass black holes should have migrated by dynamical friction into the central…
The most massive black holes at redshifts z = 6 were already over billion solar masses. In this chapter, we discuss the formation and growth of the first black holes in the Universe. The deaths of massive primordial stars provide potential…
Black-hole masses of distant quasars cannot be measured directly, but can be estimated to within a factor 3 to 5 using scaling relationships involving the quasar luminosity and broad-line width. Why such relationships are reasonable is…
An exact solution representing black holes in an expanding universe is found. The black holes are maximally charged and the universe is expanding with arbitrary equation of state. It is an exact solution of the Einstein-scalar-Maxwell…
The geometry of black hole spacetimes can be probed with exquisite precision in the gravitational-wave window, and possibly also in the optical regime. We study the accretion of bright spots -- objects which emit strongly in the optical or…
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,…
We use dynamical mass measurements of 16 black holes in transient low-mass X-ray binaries to infer the stellar black hole mass distribution in the parent population. We find that the observations are best described by a narrow mass…
One of the problems for the cyclic Universe will be its compatibility with a vast population of indestructible black holes that accumulate from cycle to cycle. The article considers a simple iterative model of the evolution of black holes…
We have known for more than thirty years that black holes behave as thermodynamic systems, radiating as black bodies with characteristic temperatures and entropies. This behavior is not only interesting in its own right; it could also,…