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The multitude of binary black hole coalescence detections in gravitational waves has renewed our interest on environments that can be the cradle of these mergers. In this work we study merger rates of binary black holes in globular clusters…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-10-21 Konstantinos Kritos , Ilias Cholis

A promising channel for producing binary black hole mergers is the Lidov-Kozai orbital resonance in hierarchical triple systems. While this mechanism has been studied in isolation, the distribution of such mergers in time and across…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-06-30 Dylan Britt , Ben Johanson , Logan Wood , M. Coleman Miller , Erez Michaely

Recent N-body simulations predict that large numbers of stellar black holes (BHs) could remain bound to globular clusters (GCs) at present, and merging BH--BH binaries are produced dynamically in significant numbers. We systematically vary…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2017-01-11 Sourav Chatterjee , Carl L. Rodriguez , Frederic A. Rasio

It remains an open question whether the binary black hole mergers observed with gravitational-wave detectors originate from the evolution of isolated massive binary stars or were dynamically driven by perturbations from the environment.…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-01-23 Jakob Stegmann , Davide Gerosa , Isobel Romero-Shaw , Giulia Fumagalli , Hiromichi Tagawa , Lorenz Zwick

One proposed black hole formation channel involves hierarchical mergers, where black holes form through repeated binary mergers. Previous studies have shown that such black holes follow a near-universal spin distribution centered around…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-03-28 Angela Borchers , Claire S. Ye , Maya Fishbach

Properties of the to-date-observed binary black hole (BBH) merger events suggest a preference towards spin-orbit aligned mergers. Naturally, this has caused widespread interest and speculations regrading implications on various merger…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-08-09 Sambaran Banerjee , Aleksandra Olejak , Krzysztof Belczynski

Gravitational-wave detectors are unveiling a population of binary black hole (BBH) mergers out to redshifts $z \approx 1$, and are starting to constrain how the BBH population evolves with redshift. We present predictions for the redshift…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-06-05 Claire S. Ye , Maya Fishbach

The population of binary black hole mergers observed in gravitational waves, together with astrophysical simulations, can help us to understand the properties of the progenitors and the binary formation mechanisms in different astrophysical…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-12-12 Ken K. Y. Ng , Konstantinos Kritos , Andrea Antonelli , Roberto Cotesta , Emanuele Berti

The observed binary black hole (BBH) mergers indicate a large Galactic progenitor population continuously evolving from large orbital separations and low gravitational wave (GW) frequencies to the final merger phase. We investigate the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2019-04-19 Xiao Fang , Todd A. Thompson , Christopher M. Hirata

The dense and gaseous environments of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) can catalyze repeated mergers of stellar-mass black holes (BHs), potentially explaining the high-mass tail of binary black hole (BBH) mergers observed by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-08-22 Maria Paola Vaccaro

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-07-20 Enrico Barausse , Andrea Lapi

Stellar triples with massive stellar components are common, and can lead to sequential binary black-hole mergers. Here, we outline the evolution towards these sequential mergers, and explore these events in the context of gravitational-wave…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-01-27 Alejandro Vigna-Gómez , Silvia Toonen , Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz , Nathan W. C. Leigh , Jeff Riley , Carl-Johan Haster

We present a novel framework to infer the mass of clusters that host hierarchical binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected with gravitational-waves (GWs), on a single event basis. We show that the requirement that a second-generation (2G)…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-02-06 Avinash Tiwari , Shasvath J. Kapadia

Dynamical interactions in dense star clusters are considered one of the most effective formation channels of binary black holes (BBHs). Here, we present direct $N-$body simulations of two different star cluster families: low-mass…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-10-12 Stefano Torniamenti , Sara Rastello , Michela Mapelli , Ugo N. Di Carlo , Alessandro Ballone , Mario Pasquato

With the hundreds of merging binary black hole (BH) signals expected to be detected by LIGO/Virgo, LISA and other instruments in the next few years, the modeling of astrophysical channels that lead to the formation of compact-object…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-05-15 Giacomo Fragione , Bence Kocsis

[ABRIDGED] We study supermassive black hole binary mergers driven by angular momentum loss to small-scale gas discs. Such binaries form after major galaxy mergers, but their fate is unclear since hardening through stellar scattering becomes…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-03-08 J. Cuadra , P. J. Armitage , R. D. Alexander , M. C. Begelman

The vast majority of compact binary mergers in the Universe produce gravitational waves that are too weak to yield unambiguous detections; they are unresolved. We present a method to infer the population properties of compact binaries --…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2020-06-17 Rory Smith , Colm Talbot , Francisco Hernandez Vivanco , Eric Thrane

Gravitational wave observations of eccentric binary black hole mergers will provide unequivocal evidence for the formation of these systems through dynamical assembly in dense stellar environments. The study of these astrophysically…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2019-09-06 E. A. Huerta , Roland Haas , Sarah Habib , Anushri Gupta , Adam Rebei , Vishnu Chavva , Daniel Johnson , Shawn Rosofsky , Erik Wessel , Bhanu Agarwal , Diyu Luo , Wei Ren

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…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-03-18 Lazaros Souvaitzis , Antti Rantala , Thorsten Naab

The high rate of black hole (BH) mergers detected by LIGO/Virgo opened questions on their astrophysical origin. One possibility is the dynamical channel, in which binary formation and hardening is catalyzed by dynamical encounters in…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-10-24 Giacomo Fragione , Bence Kocsis