Related papers: What's in a binary black hole's mass parameter?
Gravitational waves (GW), emanating from binary black holes (BBH), encode vital information about their source. GW signals enable us to deduce key properties of the BBH population across the universe, including mass, spin, and eccentricity…
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 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…
We reanalyse the LIGO-Virgo strain data of the 10 binary black hole mergers reported to date and compute the likelihood function in terms of chirp mass, mass ratio and effective spin. We discuss the strong degeneracy between mass ratio and…
We derive closed formulas for the mass and spin parameters of a Kerr black hole in terms of a minimal quantity of observational data: the red-/blue-shifts of photons emitted by massive particles (stars) moving on geodesics around the black…
There is increasing evidence for multiple binary black hole~(BBH) subpopulations in the cumulative gravitational wave catalog by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration. The astrophysical interpretation of this complex underlying population is…
In this {\it Letter}, we make an attempt to estimate the masses of black holes and their distributions in BL Lac objects. We find there is a bimodal population of black hole masses in BL Lacs: the first has a lower-mass peak centred at…
We have calculated the detectable merger rate of primordial black holes, as a function of the redshift, as well as the binary's mass ratio, total mass and chirp mass (observables that have not previously been explored in great detail for…
We investigate the impact of millicharged particles (MCPs) on massive stars undergoing pulsational pair-instability supernovae and on the location of the lower edge of the black hole mass gap. We find that energy losses due to MCP emission…
We investigate the formation of merging binary black holes (BHs) through isolated binary evolution, performing binary population synthesis calculations covering an unprecedentedly wide metallicity range of Population (Pop) I, II, III, and…
Recent intensive observations of the BL Lac object OJ 287 raise a lot of questions on the models of binary black holes, processing jets, rotating helical jets and thermal instability of slim accretion disks. After carefully analyzing their…
A new approach to constraining or determining the spin of a massive black hole is proposed. A key parameter in the analysis is the dimensionless ratio, r, of the energy released to the mass of the hole. It is shown that the black hole spin,…
Gravitational wave (GW) detections of binary black hole (BH) mergers have begun to sample the cosmic BH mass distribution. The evolution of single stellar cores predicts a gap in the BH mass distribution due to pair-instability supernova…
We present the first study of the dynamical evolution of an isolated star cluster that combines a significant population of primordial binaries with the presence of a central black hole. We use equal-mass direct N-body simulations, with N…
The merger of a binary black hole gives birth to a highly distorted final black hole. The gravitational radiation emitted as this black hole relaxes presents us with the unique opportunity to probe extreme gravity and its connection with…
When binary black holes form in the field, it is expected that their orbits typically circularize before coalescence. In galactic nuclei and globular clusters, binary black holes can form dynamically. Recent results suggest that…
The properties of precessing, coalescing binary black holes are presently inferred through comparison with two approximate models of compact binary coalescence. In this work we show these two models often disagree substantially when…
Population III stars, born from the primordial gas in the Universe, lose a negligible fraction of their mass via stellar winds and possibly follow a top-heavy mass function. Hence, they have often been regarded as the ideal progenitors of…
To date, close to fifty presumed black hole binary mergers were observed by the LIGO and Virgo detectors. The analyses have been done with an assumption that these objects are black holes by limiting the spin prior to the Kerr bound.…
We present the first study of the dynamical evolution of a star cluster that combines a significant population of primordial binaries with the presence of a central black hole. We use direct N-body simulations, with a black hole mass of…