Related papers: Modified Gravity and the Black Hole Mass Gap
We demonstrate the power of the black hole mass gap as a novel probe of fundamental physics. New light particles that couple to the Standard Model can act as an additional source of energy loss in the cores of population-III stars,…
We introduce a novel black hole mass function which realistically models the physics of star formation and pair instability supernova with a minimal number of parameters. Applying this to all events in the LIGO-Virgo GWTC-2 catalog, we…
A consequence of adopting a modified gravitational theory (MOG) for the aLIGO GW190521 gravitational wave detection involving binary black hole sources is to fit the aLIGO strain and chirp data with lower mass, compact coalescing binary…
In modified gravity models that allow for additional non-compact spacetime dimensions, energy from gravitational waves can leak into these extra spacetime dimensions, leading to a reduction in the amplitude of the observed gravitational…
In standard stellar evolution, stars with masses ranging from approximately $150$ to $240 M_\odot$ are expected to evolve to a pair instability supernova with no black hole (BH) remnant. This evolutionary behavior leads to a predicted gap…
General Relativity (GR) was proven via the direct detection of gravitational waves from the mergers of the binary black holes and binary neutron stars by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. These detections confirmed the…
An explicit example is found showing how a modified theory of gravity can be constrained with the ringdown signals from merger of binary black holes. This has been made possible by the fact that the modified gravitational theory considered…
Dynamical mass discrepancies in galaxies have two possible explanations: the existence of large amounts of dark matter or the breakdown of Newtonian gravity. True dark matter halos of galaxies could differ in several respects from apparent…
In a binary system, the gravitational potential of the primary black hole may play an important role in enhancing the fallback accretion onto the lighter compact object newly formed in the second supernova explosion. As a result, the final…
The shadows cast by non-rotating and rotating modified gravity (MOG) black holes are determined by the two parameters mass $M$ and angular momentum $J=Ma$. The sizes of the shadows cast by the spherically symmetric static Schwarzschild-MOG…
Gravitational-wave measurements of the binary black hole population provide insights into the evolution of merging binaries. We explore potential correlation between mass and mass ratio with phenomenological population models where the…
Pair-instability should prevent the direct formation of black holes above about $50M_\odot$ creating a pair-instability mass gap. Yet gravitational-wave observations have detected black holes in this mass range. These systems can be…
General relativity predicts mass and spin growth of an inspiralling black hole due to an energy-momentum flux flowing through the black-hole horizon. The leading-order terms of this horizon flux introduce 2.5 and 3.5 post-Newtonian…
Models for black hole (BH) formation from stellar evolution robustly predict the existence of a pair-instability supernova (PISN) mass gap in the range $\sim50$ to $\sim120$ solar masses. This theoretical prediction is supported by the…
The LIGO/Virgo Collaboration has recently observed GW190521, the first binary black hole merger with at least the primary component mass in the mass gap predicted by the pair-instability supernova theory. This observation disfavors the…
We examine how future gravitational-wave measurements from merging black holes (BHs) can be used to infer the shape of the black-hole mass function, with important implications for the study of star formation and evolution and the…
Stellar evolution predicts the existence of a mass gap for black hole remnants produced by pair-instability supernova dynamics, whose lower and upper edges are very uncertain. We study the possibility of constraining the location of the…
Gravitational-wave (GW) catalogs are rapidly increasing in number, allowing for robust statistical analyses of the population of compact binaries. Nonetheless, GW inference of cosmology has typically relied on additional electromagnetic…
The measurement of the size of gravitationally bounded structures is an important test of gravity theories. For a given radius different theories can in fact predict a different gravitational stability mass (GSM) necessary to ensure the…
The existence of black holes is a central prediction of general relativity and thus serves as a basic consistency test for modified theories of gravity. In spherical symmetry, only two classes of dynamic solutions are compatible with the…