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Using state-of-the-art dynamical simulations of globular clusters, including radiation reaction during black hole encounters and a cosmological model of star cluster formation, we create a realistic population of dynamically-formed binary…
The catalog of gravitational-wave events is growing, and so are our hopes of constraining the underlying astrophysics of stellar-mass black-hole mergers by inferring the distributions of, e.g., masses and spins. While conventional analyses…
Stellar evolution theories predict a gap in the black hole birth mass spectrum as the result of pair instability processes in the cores of massive stars.This gap, however, is not seen in the binary black hole masses inferred from…
Observations have shown that the majority of massive stars, progenitors of black holes (BHs), have on average more than one stellar companion. In triple systems, wide inner binaries can be driven to a merger by the third body due to…
Recent numerical simulations of binary black hole mergers show the possibility of producing very large recoil velocities (> 3000 km/s). Kicks of this magnitude should be sufficient to eject the final black hole from virtually any galactic…
Eccentric mergers are a signature of the dynamical formation channel of binary black holes (BBHs) in dense stellar environments and hierarchical triple systems. Here, we investigate the formation of eccentric mergers via binary-single…
We explore the properties of dense star clusters that are likely to be the nurseries of stellar black holes pairing in close binaries. We combine a cosmological model of globular cluster formation with analytic prescriptions for the…
Binary black holes (BBHs) are one of the endpoints of isolated binary evolution, and their mergers a leading channel for gravitational wave events. Here, using the evolutionary code \textsc{StarTrack}, we study the statistical properties of…
Black hole binaries formed dynamically in globular clusters are believed to be one of the main sources of gravitational waves in the Universe. Here, we use our new population synthesis code, cBHBd, to determine the redshift evolution of the…
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…
Mergers of black-hole binaries are expected to release large amounts of energy in the form of gravitational radiation. However, binary evolution models predict merger rates too low to be of observational interest. In this paper we explore…
The hierarchical scenario of structure formation describes how objects like galaxies and galaxy clusters are formed by mergers of small objects. In this scenario, mergers of galaxies can lead to the formation of massive black hole (MBH)…
The formation mechanisms of merging binary black holes (BBHs) observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration remain uncertain. Detectable eccentricity provides a powerful diagnostic for distinguishing between different formation channels,…
We present models of realistic globular clusters with post-Newtonian dynamics for black holes. By modeling the relativistic accelerations and gravitational-wave emission in isolated binaries and during three- and four-body encounters, we…
Given the stellar density near the galactic center, close encounters between compact object binaries and the supermassive black hole are a plausible occurrence. We present results from a numerical study of close to 13 million such…
We present a novel self-consistent theoretical framework to characterize the formation, evolution, and merger sites of dynamically-formed black hole binaries, with a focus on explaining the most massive events observed by the…
Hierarchical triples are expected to be produced by the frequent binary-mediated interactions in the cores of globular clusters. In some of these triples, the tertiary companion can drive the inner binary to merger following large…
Recent gravitational wave observations include possible detections of black hole - neutron star binary mergers. As with binary black hole mergers, numerical simulations help characterize the sources. For binary systems with neutron star…
We present results of numerical simulations of sequences of binary-single scattering events of black holes in dense stellar environments. The simulations cover a wide range of mass ratios from equal mass objects to 1000:10:10 solar masses…
Black hole (BH) triples represent one of the astrophysical pathways for BH mergers in the Universe detectable by LIGO and VIRGO. We study the formation of BH triples via binary-binary encounters in dense clusters, showing that one-third of…