Related papers: Black-hole mergers in disklike environments could …
Several astrophysical scenarios have been proposed to explain the origin of the population of binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected in gravitational waves (GWs) by the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration. Among them, BBH mergers assembled…
The spin of black holes in black hole-neutron star (BHNS) binaries can have a strong influence on the merger dynamics and the postmerger state; a wide variety of spin magnitudes and orientations are expected to occur in nature. In this…
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…
The masses, rates, and spins of merging stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) detected by aLIGO and Virgo provide challenges to traditional BBH formation and merger scenarios. An active galactic nucleus (AGN) disk provides a promising…
Two of the dominant channels to produce merging stellar-mass black-hole binaries are believed to be the isolated evolution of binary stars in the field and dynamical formation in star clusters. The first reported black-hole binary event…
Many astrophysical scenarios have been proposed to explain the several black hole (BH) and neutron star binary mergers observed via gravitational waves (GWs) by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration. Contributions from various channels can be…
The behavior of merging black holes (including the emitted gravitational waves and the properties of the remnant) can currently be computed only by numerical simulations. This paper introduces ten numerical relativity simulations of binary…
We study the long-term evolution of two or more stellar black holes (BHs) on initially separated but unstable circular orbits around a supermassive BH (SMBH). Such a close-packed orbital configuration can naturally arise from BH migrations…
Coincident detections of electromagnetic (EM) and gravitational wave (GW) signatures from coalescence events of supermassive black holes are the next observational grand challenge. Such detections will provide the means to study…
Recent simulations show that the eccentricity of supermassive binary black hole with intermediate mass ratio could grow toward near unity through gravitational interaction with the stellar background in the merging remnant after two…
The LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave detectors have uncovered binary black hole systems with definitively nonzero spins, as well as systems with significant spin residing in the more massive black hole of the pair. We investigate the…
We perform a hierarchical Bayesian analysis of the GWTC-2 catalog to investigate the mixed scenario in which the merger events are explained by black holes of both astrophysical and primordial origin. For the astrophysical scenario we adopt…
GW241011 and GW241110 both exhibit extremely asymmetric masses, high primary spins, and significant spin-orbit misalignment, which challenge the formation of first-generation binary black hole mergers formed from stellar collapse. This…
In this Letter we revisit arguments suggesting that the Bardeen-Petterson effect can coalign the spins of a central supermassive black hole binary accreting from a circumbinary (or circumnuclear) gas disc. We improve on previous estimates…
When two black holes merge in a dense star cluster, they form a new black hole with a well-defined mass and spin. If that "second-generation" black hole remains in the cluster, it will continue to participate in dynamical encounters, form…
We present results obtained by scattering a scalar field off the curved background of a coalescing binary black hole system. A massless scalar field is evolved on a set of fixed backgrounds, each provided by a spatial hypersurface generated…
Astrophysically realistic black holes may have spins that are nearly extremal (i.e., close to 1 in dimensionless units). Numerical simulations of binary black holes are important tools both for calibrating analytical templates for…
Solutions to the two-body problem in general relativity allow us to predict the mass, spin and recoil velocity of a black-hole merger remnant given the masses and spins of its binary progenitors. In this paper we address the inverse…
Gravitational-wave observations of binary black hole (BBH) systems point to black hole spin magnitudes being relatively low. These measurements appear in tension with high spin measurements for high-mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs). We use grids…
Binary black holes can form efficiently in dense young stellar clusters, such as the progenitors of globular clusters, via a combination of gravitational segregation and cluster evaporation. We use simple analytic arguments supported by…