Related papers: 3D Adiabatic Simulations of Binary Black Hole Form…
Numerical studies of gas accretion onto supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) have generally been limited to conditions where the circumbinary disk (CBD) is 10-100 times thicker than expected for disks in active galactic nuclei (AGN).…
Black hole-neutron star (BHNS) binaries are important sources of gravitational waves for second-generation interferometers, and BHNS mergers are also a proposed engine for short, hard gamma-ray bursts. The behavior of both the spacetime…
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are massive black holes (BHs) caught in the act of accreting gas at the centre of their host galaxies. Part of the accreting mass is converted to energy and released into the surrounding medium, in a process…
The origin of the tight scaling relation between the mass of supermassive black holes (SMBHs; $M_{\rm BH}$) and their host-galaxy properties remains unclear. Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) probe phases of ongoing SMBH growth and offer the…
The formation channels of binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA (LVK) network remain uncertain. While BBH mergers occurring inside active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks may interact with surrounding gas and generate…
Binary black hole (BBH) evolution in the discs of active galactic nuclei (AGN) is a promising channel for gravitational wave (GW)-driven mergers. It is however unclear whether binaries interacting with the surrounding disc undergo orbital…
There possibly was an AGN episode in the Galactic Centre about 6 Myr ago, powerful enough to produce the Fermi bubbles. We present numerical simulations of a possible scenario giving rise to an activity episode: a collision between a…
Massive black-hole (MBH) binaries, which are expected to form following the merger of their parent galaxies, produce gravitational waves which will be detectable by Pulsar Timing Arrays at nanohertz frequencies (year periods). While no…
Merging compact black-hole (BH) binaries are likely to exist in the nuclear star clusters around supermassive BHs (SMBHs), such as Sgr A$^\ast$. They may also form in the accretion disks of active galactic nuclei. Such compact binaries can…
Ground-based gravitational wave (GW) observatories have detected approximately 200 binary black hole (BH) mergers. The astrophysical origin of these events are debated, with evidence suggesting that at least a subset originated from dynamic…
Very wide binaries (> 500 AU) are subject to numerous encounters with flying-by stars in the Galactic field and can be perturbated into highly eccentric orbits (e ~ 0.99). For such systems tidal interactions at close pericenter passages can…
The formation and evolution of binary black holes (BH) is studied using the modern evolutionary scenario for very massive stars with high mass loss (Vanbeveren et al. 1998). Main sequence stars with masses $M>35 M_\odot$ are assumed to form…
We study the interaction between an unequal mass binary with an isothermal circumbinary disk, motivated by the theoretical and observational evidence that after a major merger of gas-rich galaxies, a massive gaseous disk with a SMBH binary…
Massive black hole binaries (MBHBs) represent an unavoidable outcome of hierarchical galaxy formation, but their dynamical evolution at sub-parsec scales is poorly understood, due to a combination of uncertainties in theoretical models and…
The astrophysical origin of gravitational wave (GW) transients is a timely open question in the wake of discoveries by LIGO/Virgo. In active galactic nuclei (AGNs), binaries form and evolve efficiently by interaction with a dense population…
The growing number of stellar-mass binary black hole mergers discovered by Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo are starting to constrain the binaries' origin and environment. However, we still lack sufficiently accurate modeling of binary…
The recent discovery of the binary black hole (BBH) merger event GW190521, between two black holes (BHs) of $\approx100M_\odot$, and as well as other massive BBH merger events involving BHs within the pair-instability supernova (PSN) mass…
We study the effect of AGN mechanical and radiation feedback on the formation of bulge dominated galaxies via mergers of disc galaxies. The merging galaxies have mass-ratios of 1:1 to 6:1 and include pre-existing hot gaseous halos to…
We present results from the first fully general relativistic, magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of an equal-mass black hole binary (BHBH) in a magnetized, circumbinary accretion disk. We simulate both the pre and post-decoupling…
The origin of the black hole (BH) binary mergers observed by LIGO-Virgo is still uncertain, as are the boundaries of the stellar BH mass function. Stellar evolution models predict a dearth of BHs both at masses $\gtrsim 50$ M$_\odot$ and…