Related papers: Fading into darkness: A weak mass ejection and low…
When a massive star reaches the end of its lifetime, its core collapses and releases neutrinos that drive a shock into the outer layers (stellar envelope). A sufficiently strong shock ejects the envelope, producing a supernova. If the shock…
The fate of massive stars above 20M$_{\odot}$ remains uncertain. Debate persists about whether they die as supernovae (SNe), or if they collapse directly into black holes (BHs) with little or no optical outburst -- so-called ``failed…
The Andromeda galaxy (M31) hosts a central super-massive black hole (SMBH), known as M31$^\ast$, which is remarkable for its mass ($\sim$$10^8{\rm~M_\odot}$) and extreme radiative quiescence. Over the past decade, the Chandra X-ray…
Stellar collapse models predict that some stars more massive than $\sim$15$M_\odot$ may collapse directly to a black hole, sometimes with a weak optical transient, a phenomenon known as a failed supernova. Detecting such events is…
Galaxies and massive black holes (BHs) presumably grow via galactic merging events and subsequent BH coalescence. As a case study, we investigate the merging event between the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and a satellite galaxy. We compute the…
In the hierarchical structure formation scenario, galaxies enlarge through multiple merging events with less massive galaxies. In addition, the Magorrian relation indicates that almost all galaxies are occupied by a central supermassive…
N6946-BH1 is the first plausible candidate for a failed supernova (SN), a peculiar event in which a massive star disappears without the expected bright SN, accompanied by collapse into a black hole (BH). Following a luminous outburst in…
Primordial black holes (PBHs) have long been suggested as a viable candidate for the elusive dark matter (DM). The abundance of such PBHs has been constrained using a number of astrophysical observations, except for a hitherto unexplored…
The central supermassive black hole (SMBH) of the Andromeda galaxy, known as M31*, exhibits dim electromagnetic emission and is inferred to have an extremely low accretion rate for its remarkable mass ($\sim10^8~\rm~M_\odot$). In this work,…
The physical processes that led to the formation of billion solar mass black holes within the first 700 million years of cosmic time remain a puzzle. Several theoretical scenarios have been proposed to seed and rapidly grow black holes, but…
I examine a recently proposed failed-supernova scenario for the fading of the yellow supergiant event M31-2014-DS1, and find that it requires unlikely fine-tuned parameters to work, if at all. In the failed-supernova scenario, most of the…
Supermassive binary black holes (BBHs) are unavoidable products of galaxy mergers and are expected to exist in the cores of many quasars. Great effort has been made during the past several decades to search for BBHs among quasars; however,…
The robustness of stellar-dynamical black hole (BH) mass measurements is illustrated using 7 galaxies that have results from independent groups. Derived masses have remained constant to a factor of about 2 as spatial resolution has improved…
Recently, the evidence for gamma-ray emission has been found in the $Fermi$-LAT observation for the outer halo of Andromeda galaxy (M31). The dark matter (DM) annihilation offers a possible explanation on the gamma-ray radiation. In this…
We present ALMA observations and multiwavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) analysis in a WISE-selected, hyperluminous dust-obscured quasar W0533-3401 at $z=2.9$. We derive its physical properties of each component, such as…
At the end of their lives the most massive stars collapse into black holes (BHs). The detection of an 85 $M_{\odot}$ BH from GW 190521 appeared to challenge the upper-mass limit imposed by pair-instability (PI). Using systematic MESA…
We investigate neutrino signals associated with black hole formation resulting from the gravitational collapse of massive stars, motivated by the candidate failed supernova M31-2014-DS1 in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). By compiling numerical…
We explore the observational implications of a model in which primordial black holes (PBHs) with a broad birth mass function ranging in mass from a fraction of a solar mass to $\sim$10$^6$ M$_{\odot}$, consistent with current observational…
We present the discovery of an exceptional dimming event in a cool supergiant star in the Local Volume spiral M51. The star, dubbed M51-DS1, was found as part of a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) search for failed supernovae (SNe). The…
In standard stellar evolution, stars with masses ranging from approximately $150$ to $240 M_\odot$ are expected to evolve to a pair instability supernova with no black hole (BH) remnant. This evolutionary behavior leads to a predicted gap…