Related papers: Intermediate Mass Black Hole Seeds from Cosmic Str…
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), with masses of hundreds to thousands of solar masses, will be unique sources of gravitational waves for LISA. Here we discuss their context as well as specific characteristics of IMBH-IMBH and…
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…
We present the results of a weakly modeled burst search for gravitational waves from mergers of non-spinning intermediate mass black holes (IMBH) in the total mass range 100--450 solar masses and with the component mass ratios between 1:1…
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…
Massive black holes in the centers of galaxies today must have grown by several orders of magnitude from seed black holes formed at early times. Detecting a population of intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) can provide constraints on…
We consider black hole - galaxy coevolution using simple analytic arguments. We focus on the fact that several supermassive black holes are known with masses significantly larger than suggested by the $M - {\sigma}$ relation, sometimes also…
The recent discovery of gravitational waves has opened new horizons for physics. Current and upcoming missions, such as LIGO, VIRGO, KAGRA, and LISA, promise to shed light on black holes of every size from stellar mass (SBH) sizes up to…
We suggest that high-mass black holes; i.e., black holes of several solar masses, can be formed in binaries with low-mass main-sequence companions, provided that the hydrogen envelope of the massive star is removed in common envelope…
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…
I review scenarios for the assembly of supermassive black holes (MBHs) at the center of galaxies that trace their hierarchical build-up far up in the dark matter halo "merger tree". Monte Carlo realizations of the merger hierarchy in a LCDM…
We study the formation of intermediate-mass ratio inspirals (IMRIs) triggered by the interactions between two stellar black holes (BHs) and an intermediate-mass BH (IMBH) inhabiting the centre of a dense star cluster. We exploit $N$-body…
Black holes formed in dense star clusters, where dynamical interactions are frequent, may have fundamentally different properties than those formed through isolated stellar evolution. Theoretical models for single star evolution predict a…
We examine the distribution of masses of black holes in transient low mass X-ray binary systems. A Bayesian analysis suggests that it is probable that six of the seven systems with measured mass functions have black hole masses clustered…
We explicitly demonstrate that current numerical relativity techniques are able to accurately evolve black hole binaries with mass ratios of the order of 1000:1. This proof of principle is relevant for future third generation (3G)…
Current stellar evolution models predict a dearth of black holes (BHs) with masses $\gtrsim 50$ M$_\odot$ and $\lesssim 5$ M$_\odot$, and intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs; $\sim10^2- 10^5$ M$_\odot$) have not yet been detected beyond…
Recent observations suggest the presence of supermassive black holes at the centers of many galaxies. The existence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) in globular clusters has also been predicted. We focus on gravitational lensing as…
Black holes are fascinating objects. As a class of solutions to the Einstein equations they have been studied a great deal, yielding a wealth of theoretical results. But do they really exist? What do astronomers really mean when they claim…
We present an indirect dynamical evidence, based on the measure of the core to half mass radius ratio (rc/rh), that a significant fraction of globular clusters in our galaxy with an age greater than 10 half-mass relaxation times (t_rh) host…
We study the gravitational wave background produced from the formation and assembly of supermassive black holes within the cosmological paradigm of hierarchical structure formation. In particular, we focus on a supermassive black hole…
We analyzed images of every northern hemisphere Sd galaxy listed in the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies (RC3) with a relatively face-on inclination ($\theta\leq30{\deg}$). Specifically, we measured the spiral arms' winding…