Related papers: The Pair-Instability Mass Gap for Black Holes
It has been recently suggested that supermassive black holes at z = 5-6 might form from super-fast (\dot M > 10^4 Msun/yr) accretion occurring in unstable, massive nuclear gas disks produced by mergers of Milky-Way size galaxies.…
The origins of coalescing binary black holes (BBHs) detected by the advanced LIGO/Virgo are still under debate, and clues may be present in the joint mass-spin distribution of these merger events. Here we construct phenomenological models…
Gravitational wave detections are starting to allow us to probe the physical processes in the evolution of very massive stars through the imprints they leave on their final remnants. Stellar evolution theory predicts the existence of a gap…
Evidence of neutron stars with deconfined quark-matter cores suggest a new pathway for the evolution of black holes. New theories about the cores of neutron stars support the idea that quarkonium is likely to grow there as the neutron star…
Recently (Brown \& Bethe 1994) it was suggested that most stars with main sequence mass in the range of about $18 - 30 M_{\odot}$ explode, returning matter to the Galaxy, and then go into low-mass ($\geq 1.5 M_{\odot}$) black holes. Even…
While large numbers of supermassive black holes have been detected at z>6, their origin is still essentially unclear. Numerical simulations have shown that the conditions for the classical direct collapse scenario are very restrictive and…
The first stars in the universe, forming at redshifts z>15 in minihalos with masses of order 10^6 Msun, may leave behind black holes as their remnants. These objects could conceivably serve as "seeds" for much larger black holes observed at…
With the growing number of detections of binary black hole mergers, we are beginning to probe structure in the distribution of masses. A recent study by Schneider et al. proposes that isolated binary evolution of stripped stars naturally…
Immediately after they are born, neutron stars are characterized by an entropy per baryon of order unity and by the presence of trapped neutrinos. If the only hadrons in the star are nucleons, these effects slightly reduce the maximum mass…
At low redshift, massive black holes are found in the centers of almost all large elliptical galaxies, and also in many lower-mass systems. Their evolution is believed to be inextricably entangled with that of their host galaxies. On the…
Close encounters and physical collisions between stars in young dense clusters can result in new channels for stellar evolution, and may lead to the formation of very massive stars and black holes via runaway merging. We present some…
We consider a subset of the physical processes that determine the spin j = a/M of astrophysical black holes. These include: (1) Initial conditions. Recent models suggest that the collapse of supermassive stars are likely to produce black…
We investigate the formation of merging binary black holes (BHs) through isolated binary evolution, performing binary population synthesis calculations covering an unprecedentedly wide metallicity range of Population (Pop) I, II, III, and…
The mass of super massive black holes at the centre of galaxies is tightly correlated with the mass of the galaxy bulges which host them. This observed correlation implies a mechanism of joint growth, but the precise physical processes…
We model the dynamical structure of M87 (NGC4486) using high spatial resolution long-slit observations of stellar light in the central regions, two-dimensional stellar light kinematics out to half of the effective radius, and globular…
Massive black holes (MBHs), with masses in the range 10^3-10^8 Msolar, which merge with a companion black hole of similar mass are expected to be the most powerful source of gravitational radiation in the frequency range probed by LISA. MBH…
We explore the potential cumulative energy production of stellar mass black holes in early galaxies. Stellar mass black holes may accrete substantially from the higher density interstellar media of primordial galaxies, and their energy…
Star clusters can interact and merge in galactic discs, halos, or centers. We present direct N-body simulations of binary mergers of star clusters with $M_{\star} = 2.7 \times 10^4 \: \mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ each, using the N-body code BIFROST…
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…
Super-massive black holes (SMBHs) observed to have masses of $M_\bullet \sim 10^9 \, \mathrm{M_\odot}$ at $z\gtrsim6$, $<1$ Gyr after the Big Bang, are thought to have been seeded by massive black holes which formed before growing…