Related papers: Observational Signatures of Supermassive Black Hol…
Gravitationally bound supermassive black hole binaries (SBHBs) are thought to be a natural product of galactic mergers and growth of the large scale structure in the universe. They however remain observationally elusive, thus raising a…
We review the state of the evidence for the existence and observational appearance of supermassive black hole binaries. Such objects are expected from standard hierarchical galaxy evolution to form after two galaxies, each containing a…
We present here an overview of recent work in the subject of astrophysical manifestations of super-massive black hole (SMBH) mergers. This is a field that has been traditionally driven by theoretical work, but in recent years has also…
Supermassive black hole (SMBH) binary systems are unavoidable outcomes of galaxy mergers. Their dynamics encode information about their formation and growth, the composition of their host galactic nuclei, the evolution of galaxies, and the…
Supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs) are the anticipated byproducts of galaxy mergers and play a pivotal role in shaping galaxy evolution, gravitational wave emissions, and accretion physics. Despite their theoretical prevalence, direct…
In spherical galaxies, binary supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have difficulty reaching sub-parsec separations due to depletion of stars on orbits that intersect the massive binary - the final-parsec problem. Galaxies that form via major…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHs) are a fascinating byproduct of galaxy mergers in the hierarchical universe. In the last stage of their orbital evolution, gravitational wave radiation drives the binary inspiral and produces the…
Galaxy mergers are common processes in the Universe. As a large fraction of galaxies hosts at their centres a central supermassive black hole (SMBH), mergers can lead to the formation of a supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB). The…
Motivated by observational searches for sub-parsec supermassive black hole binaries (SBHBs) we develop a modular analytic model to determine the likelihood for detection of SBHBs by ongoing spectroscopic surveys. The model combines the…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are a ubiquitous component of the nuclei of galaxies. It is normally assumed that, following the merger of two massive galaxies, a SMBH binary will form, shrink due to stellar or gas dynamical processes and…
We investigate a hierarchical structure formation scenario describing the evolution of a Super Massive Black Holes (SMBHs) population. The seeds of the local SMBHs are assumed to be 'pregalactic' black holes, remnants of the first POPIII…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) found in the centers of many galaxies have been recognized to play a fundamental active role in the cosmological structure formation process. In hierarchical formation scenarios, SMBHs are expected to form…
The quest for binary and dual supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the dawn of the multi-messenger era is compelling. Detecting dual active galactic nuclei (AGN) -- active SMBHs at projected separations larger than several parsecs -- and…
The study of the dynamical evolution of massive black hole pairs in mergers is crucial in the context of a hierarchical galaxy formation scenario. The timescales for the formation and the coalescence of black hole binaries are still poorly…
Pulsar timing arrays are sensitive to gravitational waves from supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries at orbital separations of << 1pc. There is currently an observational paucity of such systems, although they are central figures in…
The conventional view of stellar-mass binary black hole (sBBH) mergers is that there should not be enough matter present to produce a detectable electromagnetic transient. However, there ARE a number of mechanisms for producing such a…
Detection of electromagnetic (EM) counterparts of pre-coalescence binaries has very important implications for our understanding of the evolution of these systems as well as the associated accretion physics. In addition, a combination of EM…
Thanks to its unprecedented spatial resolution, the Hubble Space Telescope has ended a 20-year long stalemate by detecting the dynamical signature of nuclear supermassive black holes (SBHs) in a sizeable number of nearby galaxies. These…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) may exist in the centers of galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGN) and are expected to be fairly common in the Universe as a consequence of merging processes between galaxies. The existence of…
We examine the pairing process of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) down to scales of 20-100 pc using a set of N-body/SPH simulations of binary mergers of disk galaxies with mass ratios of 1:4 and 1:10. Our numerical experiments are designed…