English
Related papers

Related papers: Aligning Retrograde Nuclear Cluster Orbits with an…

200 papers

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are occasionally seen in pairs, suggesting that tidal encounters are responsible for the accretion of material by both central supermassive black holes (BHs). In Paper I of this series, we selected a sample of…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-27 Xin Liu , Yue Shen , Michael A. Strauss

Aims: We investigate the orbital and phase space properties of loss cone stars that interact strongly with a hard, high-redshift binary supermassive black hole (SMBH) system formed in a cosmological scenario. Methods: We use a novel hybrid…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2021-05-12 Branislav Avramov , Peter Berczik , Yohai Meiron , Anshuman Acharya , Andreas Just

The origin of the tight scaling relation between the mass of supermassive black holes (SMBHs; $M_{\rm BH}$) and their host-galaxy properties remains unclear. Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) probe phases of ongoing SMBH growth and offer the…

Stars can either be formed in or captured by the accretion disks in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). These AGN stars are irradiated and subject to extreme levels of accretion, which can turn even low-mass stars into very massive ones ($M > 100…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-06-30 Adam S. Jermyn , Alexander J. Dittmann , Matteo Cantiello , Rosalba Perna

The disks of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are expected to be populated by numerous stars, either formed in the outer regions of the disk via gravitational instability, or captured from the nearby nuclear star cluster. Regardless of their…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-03-07 Gaia Fabj , Alexander J. Dittmann , Matteo Cantiello , Rosalba Perna , Johan Samsing

Compact objects are expected to exist in the accretion disks of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and in the presence of such a dense environment ($\sim 10^{14}\,{\rm cm^{-3}}$), they will form a new kind of…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-04-21 Jian-Min Wang , Jun-Rong Liu , Luis C. Ho , Pu Du

Binary black holes embedded within the accretion disks that fuel active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising progenitors for the source of gravitational wave events detected by LIGO/VIRGO. Several recent studies have shown that when these…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-12-19 Josh Calcino , Adam M. Dempsey , Alexander J. Dittmann , Hui Li

Nuclear star clusters that surround supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei are thought to contain large numbers of black holes (BHs) and neutron stars (NSs), a fraction of which form binaries and could merge by Kozai-Lidov…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2019-08-02 Giacomo Fragione , Nathan Leigh , Rosalba Perna

LIGO/Virgo has detected several binary black hole (BBH) merger events that may have originated in the accretion disks of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). These events require individual black hole masses that fall within the pair instability…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-12-07 Adam M. Dempsey , Hui Li , Bhupendra Mishra , Shengtai Li

Multiple models have been suggested over the years to explain the structure and support of accretion disks around supermassive black holes, from the standard thin thermal-pressure-dominated $\alpha$-disk model to more recent models that…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-28 Yashvardhan Tomar , Philip F. Hopkins , Kyle Kremer

Stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) embedded in active galactic nucleus (AGN) discs offer a distinct dynamical channel to produce black hole mergers detected in gravitational waves by LIGO/Virgo. To understand their orbital evolution…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-01-15 Rixin Li , Dong Lai

Supermassive black holes (SMBH) are typically surrounded by a dense stellar population in galactic nuclei. Stars crossing the line of site in active galactic nuclei (AGN) produce a characteristic transit lightcurve, just like extrasolar…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2012-12-18 Bence Béky , Bence Kocsis

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) consist of a central supermassive black hole (SMBH) embedded in a region with both high gas and stellar densities: the gas is present as a thin accretion disc that fuels the central SMBH, while the stars form a…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-09-18 Yubo Su , Connar Rowan , Mor Rozner

The astrophysical origin of gravitational wave (GW) transients is a timely open question in the wake of discoveries by LIGO/Virgo. In active galactic nuclei (AGNs), binaries form and evolve efficiently by interaction with a dense population…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2021-01-27 Hiromichi Tagawa , Bence Kocsis , Zoltan Haiman , Imre Bartos , Kazuyuki Omukai , Johan Samsing

Binary black hole (BBH) mergers, particularly those with component masses in the pair-instability gap, may be produced by hierarchical mergers in the disks surrounding Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). While the interaction of an embedded BBH…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-04-13 Ya-Ping Li , Adam M. Dempsey , Hui Li , Shengtai Li , Jiaru Li

It has been suggested that merging black hole (BH) binaries in active galactic nucleus (AGN) discs formed through two-body scatterings via the gas-capture process may explain a significant fraction of BH mergers in AGN and a non-negligible…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-12-10 Connar Rowan , Henry Whitehead , Bence Kocsis

We present a model that explains some extreme variability phenomena observed in active galactic nuclei (AGN). In this model, an orbiting companion interacts with the accretion disk surrounding the central supermassive black hole (SMBH).…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-06-26 Sierra A. Dodd , Xiaoshan Huang , Shane W. Davis , Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz

A population of binary stellar-mass black hole (BBH) mergers are believed to occur embedded in the accretion disk of active galactic nuclei (AGNs). In this {\em Letter}, we demonstrate that the jets from these BBH mergers can propagate…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2023-11-21 Jin-Ping Zhu

Central supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are a ubiquitous feature of locally-observed galaxies, and ample evidence suggests that the growth of SMBHs and their host galaxies is closely linked. However, in the event of a merger,…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2011-09-30 Laura Blecha , Thomas J. Cox , Abraham Loeb , Lars Hernquist

Perturber objects interacting with supermassive black hole accretion disks are often invoked to explain observed quasi-periodic behavior in active galactic nuclei (AGN). We present global, 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD)…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-04-04 Sean M. Ressler , Luciano Combi , Xinyu Li , Bart Ripperda , Huan Yang