Related papers: Self-lensing binaries as probes of Supernova physi…
Over 40% of Sun-like stars are bound in binary or multistar systems. Stellar remnants in edge-on binary systems can gravitationally magnify their companions, as predicted 40 years ago. By using data from the Kepler spacecraft, we report the…
The recent sample of 21 detached eclipsing binaries in the Small Magellanic Cloud (Harries et al. 2003, Hilditch et al. 2005) provides a valuable test of the binary mass function for massive stars. We show that 50% of detached binaries have…
Following the collapse of their cores, some of the massive binary stars that populate our Universe are expected to form merging binaries composed of black holes and neutron stars. Gravitational-wave observations of the resulting compact…
Understanding astrophysical phenomena involving compact objects requires an insight about the engine behind core-collapse supernovae (SNe) and the fate of the stellar collapse of massive stars. In particular, this insight is crucial in…
Strongly lensed supernovae (SNe) provide a powerful way to study cosmology, SNe and galaxies. Modelling the lens system is key to extracting astrophysical and cosmological information. We present adaptive-optics-assisted high-resolution…
We report the detection and mass measurement of a binary lens OGLE-2015-BLG-1285La,b, with the more massive component having $M_1>1.35\,M_\odot$ (80% probability). A main-sequence star in this mass range is ruled out by limits on blue…
Binary supermassive black hole (SMBH) systems result from galaxy mergers, and will eventually coalesce due to gravitational wave (GW) emission if the binary separation can be reduced to $\lesssim 0.1$ pc by other mechanisms. Here, we…
Gravitational microlensing constraints on non-standard compact objects are conventionally derived assuming lenses trace the dark matter halo with velocities following a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution centered around $10^{-3}c$. However, a…
The mass discrepancy problem, observed in high-mass stars within eclipsing binaries, highlights systematic differences between dynamical and evolutionary mass estimates, challenging the accuracy of stellar evolution models. We aim to…
We use population synthesis modelling to predict the gravitational wave (GW) signal that the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) will detect from the Galactic population of compact binary systems. We implement a realistic star…
We determine the viability of exploiting lensing time delays to observe strongly gravitationally lensed supernovae (gLSNe) from first light. Assuming a plausible discovery strategy, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and the Zwicky…
Context. Strong lenses are a biased subset of the general population of galaxies. Aims. The goal of this work is to quantify how lens galaxies and lensed sources differ from their parent distribution, namely the strong lensing bias.…
The recent detections of GW150914 and GW151226 imply an abundance of stellar-mass binary-black-hole mergers in the local universe. While ground-based gravitational-wave detectors are limited to observing the final moments before a binary…
When the light from a distant object passes very near to a foreground galaxy or cluster, gravitational lensing can cause it to appear as multiple images on the sky. If the source is variable, it can be used to constrain the cosmic expansion…
The first directly observed gravitational wave event, GW150914, featuring the merger of two massive black holes, highlighted the need to determine how these systems of compact remnant binaries are formed. We use the binary population…
We search for gravitational wave (GW) events from LIGO-Virgo's third run that may have been affected by gravitational lensing. Gravitational lensing delays the arrival of GWs, and alters their amplitude -- thus biasing the inferred…
Next-generation ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors are expected to observe millions of binary black hole mergers, a fraction of which will be strongly lensed by intervening galaxies or clusters, producing multiple images with…
We perform a systematic search for sub-parsec binary supermassive black holes (BHs) in normal broad line quasars at z<0.8, using multi-epoch SDSS spectroscopy of the broad Hbeta line. Our working model is that: only one of the two BHs in…
We examine binary systems where the more massive star, the primary, explodes as a core collapse supernova (CCSN) the secondary star is already a giant that intercepts a large fraction of the ejecta. The ejecta might pollute the secondary…
Binary stars are gravitationally bound stellar systems where the evolution of each component can significantly influence the evolution of its companion and the system as a whole. In certain cases, the evolution of these systems can lead to…