Related papers: Determining sub-parsec supermassive black hole bin…
We present our search program for substellar companions using high-precision relative astronomy. Due to its orbital motion around the star, an unseen substellar companion would produce a periodic "wobble" of the host star, which is the…
Observations indicate that most massive galaxies contain a supermassive black hole, and theoretical studies suggest that when such galaxies have a major merger, the central black holes will form a binary and eventually coalesce. Here we…
The future space-based gravitational wave detector LISA will be able to measure parameters of coalescing massive black hole binaries, often to extremely high accuracy. Previous work has demonstrated that the black hole spins can have a…
The Herbig Ae/Be star LkHalpha 101 has been imaged at high angular resolution at a number of wavelengths in the near-infrared (from 1 to 3 microns) using the Keck 1 Telescope, and also observed in the mid-infrared (11.15 microns) using the…
In this paper, we study and compare the optical and X-ray counterparts of subparsec supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs). With that aim, we simulated the profiles of optical spectral lines emitted from the broad line region (BLR) as…
In X-ray binaries, several percent of the compact object luminosity is intercepted by the surface of the normal companion and re-radiated through Compton reflection and the K-fluorescence. This reflected emission follows the variability of…
Differential astrometry measurements from the Palomar High-precision Astrometric Search for Exoplanet Systems have been combined with lower precision single-aperture measurements covering a much longer timespan (from eyepiece measurements,…
Context: Extended circumstellar emission has been detected within a few 100 milli-arcsec around > 10% of nearby main sequence stars using near-infrared interferometry. Follow-up observations using other techniques, should they yield similar…
Mass and radius measurements of stars are important inputs for models of stellar structure. Binary stars are of particular interest in this regard, because astrometry and spectroscopy of a binary together provide the masses of both stars as…
In the last 10 years multi-wavelength fast variability studies of low mass X-ray binaries have shown a dramatic development. A key discovery was the detection of O-IR sub-second fluctuations in two black-hole transients, lagging the X-rays…
Microlensing is one of the most promising tools for discovering stellar-mass black holes (BHs) in the Milky Way because it allows us to probe dark or faint celestial compact objects. While the existence of stellar-mass BHs has been…
Polarimetry provides key physical information on the properties of interacting binary systems, sometimes difficult to obtain by any other type of observation. Indeed, radiation processes such as scattering by free electrons in the hot…
A search for recoiling supermassive black hole candidates recently yielded the best candidate thus far, SDSS J092712.65+294344.0 reported by Komossa et al. Here we propose the alternative hypothesis that this object is a supermassive black…
Context: Brown dwarfs exhibit complex atmospheric signatures, and their properties depend sensitively on effective temperature, surface gravity, and metallicity. Several physical properties of brown dwarfs in binary systems can be well…
The masses of compact objects in X-ray binaries are best constrained through dynamical measurements, relying on radial velocity curves of the companion star. In anticipation of upcoming high X-ray spectral resolution telescopes, we explore…
Massive binaries are crucial laboratories that allow us to investigate processes occurring in quite extreme conditions, such as particle acceleration, high-energy emission, or even dust formation. All these processes are intimately…
The innermost parts of dusty debris disks around main sequence stars are currently poorly known due to the high contrast and small angular separation with their parent stars. Using near-infrared interferometry, we aim to detect the…
The spectroscopic orbit of a circumpolar high-proper-motion visual binary BD +82 565 A component is determined from 57 CORAVEL radial velocity measurements. A short period P = 12.69 d and a moderate eccentricity e = 0.30 are obtained. The…
Intense flaring events in the near-infrared and X-ray wavebands of our Galactic Center have been the subject of research for decades. In recent years, the GRAVITY instrument of the Very Large Telescope captured the motion and polarimetric…
We review the state of the evidence for the existence and observational appearance of supermassive black hole binaries. Such objects are expected from standard hierarchical galaxy evolution to form after two galaxies, each containing a…