Related papers: Evidence for hierarchical black hole mergers in th…
Primordial black holes (PBHs) are well-motivated candidates for cold dark matter and may also account for a fraction of the binary black hole mergers observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration. In this study, we investigate the…
The origin of the correlation between the effective spins ($\chi_{\rm eff}$) and mass ratios ($q$) of LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA's binary black holes (BBHs) is still an open question. Motivated by the recent identification of two subpopulations of…
The gravitational wave event GW190521 involves the merger of two black holes of $\sim 85\text{M}_\odot$ and $\sim 66\text{M}_\odot$ forming an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH) of mass $\sim 142\text{M}_\odot$. Both progenitors are…
I investigate the roles of cluster dynamics and massive binary evolution in producing stellar-remnant binary black hole (BBH) mergers over the cosmic time. To that end, dynamical BBH mergers are obtained from long-term direct N-body…
GW231123, the most massive binary black hole (BBH) merger detected by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA, highlights the need to understand the origins of massive, high-spin stellar black holes (BHs). Dense star clusters provide natural environments for…
Binary black holes are thought to form primarily via two channels: isolated evolution and dynamical formation. The component masses, spins, and eccentricity of a binary black hole system provide clues to its formation history. We focus on…
Gravitational-wave observations provide the unique opportunity of studying black hole formation channels and histories -- but only if we can identify their origin. One such formation mechanism is the dynamical synthesis of black hole…
In this paper we study the evolution of a primordial black hole binary (BHB) in a sample of over 1500 direct-summation $N-$body simulations of small-and intermediate-size isolated star clusters as proxies of galactic open clusters. The BHBs…
The Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo gravitational wave detectors have detected a population of binary black hole mergers in their first two observing runs. For each of these events we have been able to associate a potential sky location…
We present the first modeled search for gravitational waves using the complete binary black hole gravitational waveform from inspiral through the merger and ringdown for binaries with negligible component spin. We searched approximately 2…
We investigate properties of black hole (BH) binaries formed in globular clusters via dynamical processes, using direct N-body simulations. We pay attention to effects of BH mass function on the total mass and mass ratio distributions of BH…
GW190521 was the most massive black hole merger discovered by LIGO/Virgo so far, with masses in tension with stellar evolution models. A possible explanation of such heavy black holes is that they themselves are the remnants of previous…
We present the third Open Gravitational-wave Catalog (3-OGC) of compact-binary coalescences, based on the analysis of the public LIGO and Virgo data from 2015 through 2019 (O1, O2, O3a). Our updated catalog includes a population of 57…
The first direct detections of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes open a unique window into the binary black hole formation environment. One promising environmental signature is the angular distribution of the black hole…
The recent binary black hole (BH) merger GW231123, with both components likely in the high-mass gap and with high spins, challenges standard BH binary formation models. It is usually thought that the BHs are of second (or higher) generation…
Nearly all of the previous gravitational wave (GW) searches in the LIGO-Virgo data included GW waveforms with only the dominant quadrupole harmonic, i.e., omitting higher-order harmonics which are predicted by general relativity. We…
The LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors have uncovered binary black hole systems with definitively nonzero spins, as well as systems with significant spin residing in the more massive black hole of the pair. We investigate the…
Recent detections of gravitational waves from mergers of neutron stars (NSs) and black holes (BHs) in the low and high-end mass gap regimes pose a puzzle to standard stellar and binary evolution theory. Mass-gap mergers may originate from…
The merging black hole binaries detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) gravitational-wave observatories, may help us shed light on how such binaries form. In addition, these detections can help us probe the hypothesized primordial black…
We address two important questions in gravitational-wave astronomy. What is the astrophysical formation scenario leading to black-hole binary mergers? Did some of the merging black holes form hierarchically through previous generations of…