Related papers: Dark Black Holes in the Mass Gap
The recent detection of GW190521 stimulated ideas on how to populate the predicted black hole pair-instability mass gap. One proposed scenario is the dynamical merger of two stars below the pair instability regime forming a star with a…
In standard stellar evolution, stars with masses ranging from approximately $150$ to $240 M_\odot$ are expected to evolve to a pair instability supernova with no black hole (BH) remnant. This evolutionary behavior leads to a predicted gap…
We demonstrate the power of the black hole mass gap as a novel probe of fundamental physics. New light particles that couple to the Standard Model can act as an additional source of energy loss in the cores of population-III stars,…
Standard stellar evolution models predict that black holes in the range of approximately $50 - 140 M_\odot$ should not exist directly from stellar evolution. This gap appears because stars with masses between 100 and 240 $M_\odot$ are…
Stellar models indicate that the core compactness of a star, which is a common proxy for its explodability in a supernova, does not increase monotonically with the star's mass. Rather, the core compactness dips sharply over a range of…
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…
Mergers between stellar-mass black holes will be key sources of gravitational radiation for ground-based detectors. However, the rates of these events are highly uncertain, given that such systems are invisible. One formation scenario…
Stellar evolution theory predicts a "gap" in the black hole birth function caused by the pair instability. Presupernova stars that have a core mass below some limiting value, Mlo, after all pulsational activity is finished, collapse to…
Mergers of two stellar origin black holes are a prime source of gravitational waves and are under intensive investigations. One crucial ingredient in their modeling has so far been neglected. Pair-instability pulsation supernovae with…
We present an empirical approach for interpreting gravitational wave signals of binary black hole mergers under the assumption that the underlying black hole population is sourced by remnants of stellar evolution. Using the observed…
The occurrence of pair-instability supernovae is predicted to prevent the formation of black holes with masses $\gtrsim 50 M_\odot$. Recent gravitational-wave detections in this mass range require an explanation beyond that of standard…
We investigate the effects of black hole mergers in star clusters on the black hole mass function. As black holes are not produced in pair-instability supernovae, it is suggested that there is a dearth of high mass stellar black holes. This…
Pair instability (PI) and pulsational PI prevent the formation of black holes (BHs) with mass $\gtrsim{}60$ M$_\odot$ from single star evolution. Here, we investigate the possibility that BHs with mass in the PI gap form via stellar mergers…
Two of the dominant channels to produce the black-hole binary mergers observed by LIGO and Virgo are believed to be the isolated evolution of stellar binaries in the field and dynamical formation in star clusters. Their relative efficiency…
Mass distribution of black holes in low-mass X-ray binaries previously suggested the existence of a $ \sim 2-5M_{\odot} $ mass gap between the most massive neutron stars and the least massive black holes, while some recent evidence appears…
Stellar evolution predicts the existence of a mass gap for black hole remnants produced by pair-instability supernova dynamics, whose lower and upper edges are very uncertain. We study the possibility of constraining the location of the…
The binary black hole mergers observed by LIGO-Virgo gravitational-wave detectors pose two major challenges: (i) how to produce these massive black holes from stellar processes; and (ii) how to bring them close enough to merge within the…
By probing the population of binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by LIGO-Virgo, we can infer properties about the underlying black hole formation channels. A mechanism known as pair-instability (PI) supernova is expected to prevent the…
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…
We consider the merging of high-mass black-hole binaries of the Cyg X-1 type, in which the O-star companion becomes a neutron star following a supernova explosion. Our estimated rate of mergers, $\sim 2\times 10^{-5} yr^{-1}$ for the…