Related papers: Resonances in binary extreme mass ratio inspirals
Black holes typically inhabit highly dynamical galactic environments and are frequently permeated by accretion media. The inevitable scattering of scalar, electromagnetic and gravitational waves off rotating and charged black holes provides…
Hierarchical structure formation inevitably leads to the formation of supermassive binary black holes (BBHs) with a sub-parsec separation in galactic nuclei. However, to date there has been no unambiguous detection of such systems. In an…
Extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs) are important sources for space-borne gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. Such a source normally consists of a stellar-mass black hole (BH) and a Kerr supermassive BH (SMBH), but recent astrophysical…
Recent astrophysical models predict that stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) could form and coalesce within a few gravitational radii of a supermassive black hole (SMBH). Detecting the gravitational waves (GWs) from such systems requires…
I present evidence of a novel guise of superradiance that arises in black hole binary spacetimes. Given the right initial conditions, a wave will be amplified as it scatters off the binary. This process, which extracts energy from the…
We discuss the conditions under which plane electromagnetic and gravitational waves can be amplified by a rotating black hole due to superradiant scattering. We show, in particular, that amplification can occur for low-frequency waves with…
We investigate the evolution of intermediate-mass (IMBHs), stellar (BHs) and binary black holes (BHBs), deposited near a supermassive black hole (SMBH) by a population of massive star clusters. Stellar BHs rapidly segregate around the SMBH,…
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…
This paper studies the formation and evolution of binary supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in rotating galactic nuclei, focusing on the role of stellar dynamics. We present the first N-body simulations that follow the evolution of the SMBHs…
The accelerated expansion of the universe is ascribed to the existence of dark energy. Black holes accretion of dark energy induces a mass change proportional to the energy density and pressure of the background dark energy fluid. The time…
We use recent progress in simulating the production of magnetohydrodynamic jets around black holes to derive the cosmic spin history of the most massive black holes, with masses >~10^8 Msol. Assuming the jet efficiency depends on spin a, we…
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…
In this paper, we study the secular dynamical evolution of binaries composed of intermediate-mass and stellar-mass black holes (IMBHs and SBHs, respectively) in orbit about a central super-massive black hole (SMBH) in galactic nuclei. Such…
The dynamics of galactic nuclei reflects the presence of supermassive black holes (SBHs) in many ways. Single SBHs act as sinks, destroying a mass in stars equal to their own mass in roughly one relaxation time and forcing nuclei to expand.…
Although supermassive black holes (SMBHs) correlate well with their host galaxies, there is an emerging view that outliers exist. Henize 2-10, NGC 4889, and NGC1277 are examples of SMBHs at least an order of magnitude more massive than…
A binary extreme-mass-ratio inspiral (b-EMRI) is a hierarchical triple system consisting of a stellar-mass binary black hole (BBH) orbiting a central Kerr supermassive black hole (SMBH). Although predicted by several astrophysical models,…
Modeling the late inspiral and merger of supermassive black holes is central to understanding accretion processes and the conditions under which electromagnetic emission accompanies gravitational waves. We use fully general relativistic,…
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…
How Supermassive Blackholes (SMBHs) are spun-up is a key issue of modern astrophysics. As an extension of the study in Wang et al. (2016), we here address the issue by comparing the host galaxy properties of nearby ($z<0.05$) radio-selected…
The vast majority of massive binary systems in the universe is evidently unsuited to produce merging binary black holes. However, several narrow evolutionary paths of isolated massive binaries towards this goal have recently been…