Related papers: An apparent positive relation between spin and orb…
We study the merger of black hole (BH)-neutron star (NS) binaries with a variety of BH spins aligned or anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum, and with the mass ratio in the range MBH/MNS = 2--5, where MBH and MNS are the mass of…
Black-hole accretion systems exhibit a characteristic coexistence of activities: broad-band X-ray variability, hot coronae, wide-angle winds, and both steady and discrete jets. This coexistence suggests a persistently time-dependent…
Observations of jets in X-ray binaries show a correlation between radio power and black hole spin. This correlation, if confirmed, points towards the idea that relativistic jets may be powered by the rotational energy of black holes. In…
X-rays trace accretion onto compact objects in binaries with low mass companions at rates ranging up to near Eddington. Accretion at high rates onto neutron stars goes through cycles with time-scales of days to months. At lower average…
We study the formation of low-mass X-ray binaries with a black hole as accreting object. The performed semi-analytic analysis reveals that the formation rate of black holes in low-mass X-ray binaries is about two orders of magnitude smaller…
Mass and spin of massive black holes (BHs) at the centre of galaxies evolve due to gas accretion and mergers with other BHs. Besides affecting e.g. the evolution of relativistic jets, the BH spin determines the efficiency with which the BH…
A summary is given of the present state of our knowledge of High-Mass X-ray Binaries (HMXBs), their formation and expected future evolution. Among the HMXB-systems that contain neutron stars, only those that have orbital periods upwards of…
The relation between the mass and spin of stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) has been proposed to be a smoking gun for the presence of multiple formation channels for compact objects. First-generation black holes (BHs) formed by…
Several black hole low-mass X-ray binaries (BHLMXBs) show very fast orbital shrinkage, which is difficult to understand in the standard picture of the LMXB evolution. Based on the possible detection of a circumbinary (CB) disk in A0620-00…
Measurements of the spin of stellar mass black holes (BHs) are now possible both through LIGO observations of binary BH mergers and for BHs in X-ray binary systems. The spins of BHs as inferred from LIGO observations suggest that BH spins…
Electromagnetic and gravitational wave observations indicate that there is dearth of compact objects with mass $\sim 2.5-5~{\rm M_\odot}$. This so-called "mass gap" may be linked to the supernova explosion mechanisms that produce neutron…
In this paper, we explore the gravitomagnetic interaction of a black hole (BH) with a misaligned accretion disc to study BH spin precession and alignment jointly with BH mass and spin parameter evolution, under the assumption that the disc…
In this work, we investigate an alternative channel for the formation of fast-spinning black hole-neutron star (BHNS) binaries, in which super-Eddington accretion is expected to occur in accreting BHs during the stable mass transfer phase…
We investigate the behaviour of the accretion discs in the outbursts of the low-mass black-hole X-ray binaries (BHXRB), an overview of which we have presented previously. Almost all of the systems in which there are sufficient observations…
Astrophysical black holes (BHs) can be fully described by their mass and spin. However, producing rapidly spinning ones is extremely difficult as the stars that produce them lose most of their angular momentum before the BH is formed.…
We investigate the time-varying electromagnetic emission of a low-mass-ratio supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) embedded in a circumprimary disk, with a particular interest in variability of shocks driven by the binary. We perform a 2D,…
We study the formation, evolution and physical properties of accretion disks formed via wind capture in binary systems. Using the AMR code AstroBEAR, we have carried out high resolution 3D simulations that follow a stellar mass secondary in…
Observations made using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer have shown that accreting weak-field neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binary systems (LMXBs) produce three distinct types of millisecond X-ray oscillations that can be used to determine…
We investigate the role of the compact object in the production of jets from neutron star X-ray binaries. The goal is to quantify the effect of the neutron star spin, if any, in powering the jet. We compile all the available measures or…
We compare the rotation rate of neutron stars in low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) with the orbital period of the binaries. We find that, while short orbital period LMXBs span a range of neutron star rotation rates, all the long period LMXBs…