Related papers: Properties of OB star-black hole systems derived f…
While the number of stellar-mass black holes detected in X-rays or as gravitational wave sources is steadily increasing, the known population remains orders of magnitude smaller than predicted by stellar evolution theory. A significant…
The stellar mass-luminosity relation is poorly constrained by observations for high mass stars. We describe our program to find eclipsing massive binaries in the Magellanic Clouds using photometry of regions rich in massive stars, and our…
We aim to hunt for massive binaries hosting a black hole companion (OB+BH) and establish the natal mass-ratio distribution of massive stars at the subsolar metallicity environment of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). We use the…
The recent detection of gravitational waves has proven the existence of massive stellar black hole binaries (BBHs), but the formation channels of BBHs are still an open question. Here, we investigate the demography of BBHs by using our new…
Motivated by the recent detection of gravitational waves from the black hole binary merger GW150914, we study the dynamical evolution of black holes in galactic nuclei where massive star clusters reside. With masses of ~10^7M_Sun and sizes…
The predicted rate of binary black hole mergers from galactic fields can vary over several orders of magnitude and is extremely sensitive to the assumptions of stellar evolution. But in dense stellar environments such as globular clusters,…
We use direct-summation N-body integrations to follow the evolution of binary black holes at the centers of galaxy models with large, constant-density cores. Particle numbers as large as 400K are considered. The results are compared with…
Stars which start their lives with spectral types O and early-B are the progenitors of core-collapse supernovae, long gamma-ray bursts, neutron stars, and black holes. These massive stars are the primary sources of stellar feedback in…
Be stars are rapidly rotating B type stars. The origin of their rapid rotation is not certain, but binary interaction remains to be a possibility. In this work we investigate the formation of Be stars resulting from mass transfer in…
The role of mergers in the evolution of massive black holes is still unclear, and their dynamical evolution, from the formation of pairs to binaries and the final coalescence, carries large physical uncertainties. The identification of the…
Since many or most galaxies have central massive black holes (BHs), mergers of galaxies can form massive binary black holes (BBHs). In this paper, we study the evolution of massive BBHs in realistic galaxy models, using a generalization of…
Theoretically, bound binaries of massive black holes are expected as the natural outcome of mergers of massive galaxies. From the observational side, however, massive black hole binaries remain elusive. Velocity shifts between narrow and…
We study the prospects of searching for black hole (BH) binary systems with a stellar-mass BH and a non-compact visible companion, by utilizing the spectroscopic data of Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST). We…
When modeling the population of merging binary black holes, analyses have generally focused on characterizing the distribution of primary (i.e. more massive) black holes in the binary, while simplistic prescriptions are used for the…
Spectroscopic multiplicity surveys of O stars in young clusters and OB associations have revealed that a large portion ($\sim$ 70%) of these massive stars (M$_{i}$ $\gt$ 15 $M_{\odot}$) belong to close and short-period binaries (physical…
The hunt for compact objects is on. Rarely seen massive binaries with a compact object are a crucial phase in the evolution towards compact object mergers. In Gaia data release 3 (DR3), the first Gaia astrometric orbital solutions for…
The first directly observed gravitational wave event, GW150914, featuring the merger of two massive black holes, highlighted the need to determine how these systems of compact remnant binaries are formed. We use the binary population…
Neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes are the remnants of massive stars, which ended their lives in supernova explosions. These exotic objects can only be studied in relatively rare cases. If they are interacting with close companions…
At high metallicity, a majority of massive stars have at least one close stellar companion. The evolution of such binaries is subject to strong interaction processes, heavily impacting the characteristics of their life-ending supernova and…
Motivated by observational searches for massive black hole (MBH) pairs at kiloparsec separations we develop a semi-analytic model to describe their orbital evolution under the influence of stellar and gaseous dynamical friction (DF). The…