Related papers: Cosmic archaeology with massive stellar black hole…
The dynamical processes involving stellar-remnant black holes (BH) in stellar clusters has always drawn attention due to the BHs' potential in a number of astrophysical phenomena, especially the dynamical formation of binary black holes…
Massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) are unavoidable outcomes of the hierarchical structure formation process, and according to the theory of general relativity are expected to be the loudest gravitational wave (GW) sources in the Universe.…
Even though the existence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs, black holes with masses ranging between $10^{2-4}\,M_{\odot}$) has not yet been corroborated observationally, these objects are of high interest for astrophysics. Our…
Advanced LIGO and Virgo detected ten binary black holes (BBHs) in their first two observing runs (O1 and O2). Analysis of these events found strong evidence for a dearth of BBHs with component masses greater than $\sim45 \ M_\odot$, as…
The first LIGO-Virgo detections have confirmed the existence of massive black holes (BHs), with mass $30-40$ M$_\odot$. Such BHs might originate from massive metal-poor stars ($Z<0.3$ Z$_\odot$) or from gravitational instabilities in the…
The most massive black holes in our Universe form binaries at the centre of merging galaxies. The recent evidence for a gravitational-wave (GW) background from pulsar timing may constitute the first observation that these supermassive black…
The first stars forming in minihaloes at redshifts greater than 20 may have been very massive and could have left behind massive black hole (MBH) remnants. In previous papers we investigated the hierarchical merging of these `seed' MBHs and…
The first discovery of the gravitational wave (GW) event, GW150914, suggests a higher merger rate of black-hole (BH) binaries. If this is true, a number of BH binaries will be observed via the second-generation GW detectors, and the…
The LIGO/Virgo detections of gravitational waves from merging black holes of $\simeq$ 30 solar mass suggest progenitor stars of low metallicity (Z/Z$_{\odot} \lesssim 0.3$). In this talk I will provide constrains on where the progenitors of…
We present theoretical models of black hole (BH) populations in young stellar environments, such as starbursts and young star clusters. Using a population synthesis approach we compute the formation rates and characteristic properties of…
Currently, there are 24 black hole (BH) X-ray binary systems that have been dynamically confirmed in the Galaxy. Most of them are low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) comprised of a stellar-mass BH and a low-mass donor star. Although the…
In order to investigate the formation rate of binary black holes (BBHs) in stellar clusters with a mass comparable to open clusters, we performed a series of direct $N$-body simulations of open clusters with a mass of $2.5\times10^3$ (Model…
Possible formation mechanisms of massive close binary black holes that can merge in the Hubble time to produce powerful gravitational wave bursts detected during advanced LIGO O1 science run are briefly discussed. The pathways include the…
Binary black holes (BBHs) are one of the endpoints of isolated binary evolution, and their mergers a leading channel for gravitational wave events. Here, using the evolutionary code \textsc{StarTrack}, we study the statistical properties of…
The population of black holes observed via gravitational waves currently covers the local universe up to a redshift $z\lesssim 1$, for the most massive merging binaries, or $z\lesssim 0.25$ for low-mass BH binaries (BBH). Evolution of the…
Gravitational wave interferometers have proved the existence of a new class of binary black holes (BBHs) weighting tens of solar masses and they have provided the first reliable measurement of the rate of coalescing black holes (BHs) in the…
In multi-component dark matter models, a fraction $f_\text{pbh}$ of the dark matter could be in the form of primordial black holes (PBHs) with (sub)solar masses. Some would have formed binaries that presently trace the Milky Way halo of…
We present a novel self-consistent theoretical framework to characterize the formation, evolution, and merger sites of dynamically-formed black hole binaries, with a focus on explaining the most massive events observed by the…
The recent discovery of the gravitational wave source GW150914 has revealed a coalescing binary black hole (BBH) with masses of $\sim 30~M_\odot$. Previous proposals for the origin of such a massive binary include Population III (PopIII)…
We explore the connection between the gravitational wave (GW) merger rates of stellar-mass binary black holes (BBH) and galaxy properties. We do this by generating populations of stars using the binary population synthesis code COMPAS and…