Related papers: Black-hole mergers in disklike environments could …
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…
Despite a decade's worth of gravitational wave observation, the origin of the binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by the LIGO-VIRGO-Kagra (LVK) collaboration remains an open question. Towards assessing the feasibility and prevalence of…
Black hole (BH) - neutron star (NS) binary mergers are not only strong sources of gravitational waves (GWs), but they are also candidates for joint detections in the GW and electromagnetic (EM) spectra. However, the possible emergence of an…
Scalar fields of masses between $10^{-21}\rm{eV}/c^2$ and $10^{-11} \rm{eV}/c^2$ can exhibit enhanced gravitational interactions with black holes, and form scalar clouds around them. Such a cloud modifies the dynamics of a coalescing…
With the growing number of binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA, several systems have become difficult to explain via isolated binary evolution, having components in the pair-instability mass gap, high orbital…
Using recent results from numerical relativity simulations of black hole mergers, we revisit previous studies of cosmological black hole spin evolution. We show that mergers are very unlikely to yield large spins, unless alignment of the…
Recent gravitational wave (GW) observations by LIGO/Virgo show evidence for hierarchical mergers, where the merging BHs are the remnants of previous BH merger events. These events may carry important clues about the astrophysical host…
Merging binary black holes (BBHs) formed dynamically in dense star clusters are expected to have uncorrelated spin--orbit orientations since they are assembled through many random interactions. However, measured effective spins in BBHs…
When galaxies collide, dynamical friction drives their central supermassive black holes close enought to each other such that gravitational radiation becomes the leading dissipative effect. Gravitational radiation takes away energy,…
Gravitational wave observations of eccentric binary black hole mergers will provide unequivocal evidence for the formation of these systems through dynamical assembly in dense stellar environments. The study of these astrophysically…
Binary black-hole systems with spins aligned or anti-aligned to the orbital angular momentum provide the natural ground to start detailed studies of the influence of strong-field spin effects on gravitational wave observations of coalescing…
Binary black holes (BBHs) are one of the endpoints of isolated binary evolution, and their mergers a leading channel for gravitational wave events. Here, using the evolutionary code \textsc{StarTrack}, we study the statistical properties of…
Accretion disks around supermassive black holes are promising sites for stellar mass black hole mergers detectable with LIGO. Here we present the results of Monte-Carlo simulations of black hole mergers within 1-d AGN disk models. For the…
The origin of binary black hole (BH) mergers remains a topic of active debate, with effective spins (chi_eff) measured by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration providing crucial insights. In this study, our objective is to investigate…
The origin, environment, and evolution of stellar-mass black hole binaries are still a mystery. One of the proposed binary formation mechanisms is manifest in dynamical interactions between multiple black holes. A resulting framework of…
Recent studies indicate that the progenitors of merging black hole (BH) binaries from young star clusters can undergo a common envelope phase just like isolated binaries. If the stars emerge from the common envelope as naked cores, tidal…
The observation of gravitational-wave signals from merging black-hole binaries enables direct measurement of the properties of the black holes. An individual observation allows measurement of the black-hole masses, but only limited…
As the number of gravitational-wave detections of black hole binaries grows, so does the diversity of proposed formation channels. The growing sample of systems with highly unequal masses, such as GW190814 with $m_1=23.2\,M_{\odot}$ and…
Gravitational waves carry away both energy and angular momentum as binary black holes inspiral and merge. The relative efficiency with which they are radiated determines whether the final black hole of mass $M_f$ and spin $S_f$ saturates…
Black holes of mass M must have a spin angular momentum S below the Kerr limit chi = S/M^2 < 1, but whether astrophysical black holes can attain this limiting spin depends on their accretion history. Gas accretion from a thin disk limits…