Related papers: Final parsec evolution in the presence of intermed…
Could there be a large population of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) formed in the early universe? Whether primordial or formed in Population III, these are likely to be very subdominant compared to the dark matter density, but could…
There is a lot of current astrophysical evidence and interest in intermediate mass black holes, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand solar masses. The active galaxy M82 and the globular cluster in M31, for example, are known to…
During a galaxy merger, the supermassive black hole (SMBH) in each galaxy is thought to sink to the center of the potential and form a supermassive black hole binary; this binary can eject stars via 3-body scattering, bringing the SMBHs…
This article documents our ongoing search for the elusive "intermediate-mass" black holes. These would bridge the gap between the approximately ten solar mass "stellar-mass" black holes that are the end-product of the life of a massive…
Binary supermassive black holes form naturally in galaxy mergers, but their long-term evolution is uncertain. In spherical galaxies, N-body simulations show that binary evolution stalls at separations much too large for significant emission…
The existence of supermassive black holes lurking in the centers of galaxies and of stellar binary systems containing a black hole with a few solar masses has been established beyond reasonable doubt. The idea that black holes of…
Black holes with hundreds to thousands of solar masses are more massive than can be formed from a single star in the current universe, yet the best candidates for these objects are not located in gas-rich environments where gradual…
The coalescence of massive black hole binaries is one of the main sources of low-frequency gravitational radiation that can be detected by LISA. When two galaxies containing massive black holes merge, a binary forms at the center of the new…
This paper reviews the subject of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) with masses between those of "stellar-mass" and "super-massive" black holes. The existence of IMBHs is a real possibility: they might plausibly have formed as remnants…
Whether intermediate-mass black holes reside in nearby star clusters has remained contested for decades. We address this question by training neural network and random forest regressors on synthetic catalogs generated with the {\sc Rapster}…
This paper presents results of a series of numerical N-body experiments that describe the merging of galaxy pairs containing a massive black hole in their core. The aim is to study the orbital evolution of the two black holes through the…
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…
Recent high-resolution X-ray imaging studies have discovered possible candidates of intermediate-mass black holes with masses of $M_\bullet \sim 10^{2-4} \MO$ in circumnuclear regions of many (disk) galaxies. It is known that a large number…
Observations of the centers of galaxies continue to evolve, and it is useful to take a fresh look at the constraints that exist on alternatives to supermassive black holes at their centers. We discuss constraints complementary to those of…
At low redshift, massive black holes are found in the centers of almost all large elliptical galaxies, and also in many lower-mass systems. Their evolution is believed to be inextricably entangled with that of their host galaxies. On the…
Stellar evolution predicts the existence of a mass gap for black hole remnants produced by pair-instability supernova dynamics, whose lower and upper edges are very uncertain. We study the possibility of constraining the location of the…
Observational evidence has been mounting for the existence of intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs, 10^2-10^5 Msun), but observing them at all, much less constraining their masses, is very challenging. In one theorized formation channel,…
The article summarizes the observational evidence for the existence of massive black holes, as well as the current knowledge about their abundance, their mass and spin distributions, and their cosmic evolution within and together with their…
Could there be intermediate mass black holes in essentially all old dwarf galaxies? I argue that current observations of Active Galactic Nuclei in dwarfs allow such a radical hypothesis which provides early feedback and potentially provides…
I review the evolution of binary supermassive black holes and focus on the stellar-dynamical mechanisms that may help to overcome the final-parsec problem - the possible stalling of the binary at a separation much larger than is required…