Related papers: Superradiant clouds may be relevant for close comp…
Binary black hole coalescence has its peak of gravitational wave generation during the "plunge," the transition from quasicircular early motion to late quasinormal ringing. Although advances in numerical relativity have provided plunge…
Gravitational waves (GWs) are an exciting new probe of physics beyond the standard models of gravity and particle physics. One interesting possibility is provided by the so-called "gravitational atom," wherein a superradiant instability…
Rapidly rotating black holes are known to develop instabilities in the presence of a sufficiently light boson, a process which becomes efficient when the boson's Compton wavelength is roughly the size of the black hole. This phenomenon,…
In this work I summarize a model of binary stellar evolution involving Case C mass transfer followed by a common envelope that strips away the hydrogen from the core of the primary star at the cost of shrinking the orbital separation and…
We describe some key astrophysical processes driving the formation and evolution of black hole binaries of different nature, from stellar-mass to supermassive systems. In the first part, we focus on the mainstream channels proposed for the…
We propose to use pulsar-black hole binaries as a probe of gravitational collider physics. Induced by the gravitation of the pulsar, the atomic transitions of the boson cloud around the black hole back-react on the orbital motion. This…
We present fully relativistic predictions for the electromagnetic emission produced by accretion disks surrounding spinning and nonspinning supermassive binary black holes on the verge of merging. We use the code Bothros to post-process…
For massive black hole binaries produced in galactic mergers, we examine the possibility of inspiral induced by interaction with field stars. We model the evolution of such binaries for a range of galaxy core and binary parameters, using…
Rotational superradiance generates the amplification of incoming waves of sufficiently low frequency when scattered with a rotating absorbing body. This may be used to discover new \emph{bosonic} particles of mass $m_b$ if the rotating body…
Ultralight bosons, as important candidates of dark matter, can condense around spinning black holes (BHs) to form long-lived ``boson clouds'' due to superradiance instability. The boson-BH system can be observed through gravitational wave…
Binary black hole mergers are among the most violent events in the Universe, leading to extreme warping of spacetime and copious emission of gravitational radiation. Even though black holes are the most compact objects they are not…
The common envelope phase of binary star evolution plays a central role in many evolutionary pathways leading to the formation of compact objects in short period systems. Using three dimensional hydrodynamical computations, we review the…
Massive merging black holes will be the primary sources of powerful gravitational waves at low frequency, and will permit to test general relativity with candidate galaxies close to a binary black hole merger. In this paper we identify the…
The possible formation mechanisms of massive close binary black holes (BHs) that can merge in the Hubble time to produce powerful gravitational wave bursts detected during advanced LIGO O1 and O2 science runs include the evolution from…
Massive black holes (MBHs), with masses in the range 10^3-10^8 Msolar, which merge with a companion black hole of similar mass are expected to be the most powerful source of gravitational radiation in the frequency range probed by LISA. MBH…
Stellar-mass binary black holes may have circumbinary disks if formed through common-envelope evolution or within gaseous environments. Disks can drive binaries into wider and more eccentric orbits, while gravitational waves harden and…
During a common envelope episode in a binary system, the engulfed companion spirals to tighter orbital separations under the influence of drag from the surrounding envelope material. As this object sweeps through material with a steep…
A chain regularization method is combined with special purpose computer hardware to study the evolution of massive black hole binaries at the centers of galaxies. Preliminary results with up to N=260,000 particles are presented. The decay…
In addition to producing loud gravitational waves (GW), the dynamics of a binary black hole system could induce emission of electromagnetic (EM) radiation by affecting the behavior of plasmas and electromagnetic fields in their vicinity. We…
Binary neutron-star mergers will predominantly produce black-hole remnants of mass $\sim 3-4\,M_{\odot}$, thus populating the putative \emph{low mass gap} between neutron stars and stellar-mass black holes. If these low-mass black holes are…