English
Related papers

Related papers: A case for Case A: detailed look at binary black h…

200 papers

We explore chemically homogeneous evolution (CHE) as a formation channel for massive merging binary black holes (BBHs). We develop methods to include CHE in a rapid binary population synthesis code, Compact Object Mergers: Population…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2021-05-26 Jeff Riley , Ilya Mandel , Pablo Marchant , Ellen Butler , Kaila Nathaniel , Coenraad Neijssel , Spencer Shortt , Alejandro Vigna-Gomez

GW231123, the most massive binary black hole (BBH) merger detected by LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA, highlights the need to understand the origins of massive, high-spin stellar black holes (BHs). Dense star clusters provide natural environments for…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-11-12 Fulya Kıroğlu , Kyle Kremer , Frederic A. Rasio

We study the orbital evolution of black hole (BH) binaries in quadruple systems, where the tertiary binary excites large eccentricity in the BH binary through Lidov-Kozai (LK) oscillations, causing the binary BHs to merge via gravitational…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-12-27 Bin Liu , Dong Lai

It is believed that stellar black holes (BHs) can be formed in two different ways: Either a massive star collapses directly into a BH without a supernova (SN) explosion, or an explosion occurs in a proto-neutron star, but the energy is too…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2017-04-26 I. F. Mirabel

The environment surrounding supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in galactic nuclei (GNs) is expected to harbour stellar-mass binary black hole (BBH) populations. These binaries were suggested to form a hierarchical triple system with the SMBH,…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-12-21 László Gondán

The observed binary black hole (BBH) mergers indicate a large Galactic progenitor population continuously evolving from large orbital separations and low gravitational wave (GW) frequencies to the final merger phase. We investigate the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2019-04-19 Xiao Fang , Todd A. Thompson , Christopher M. Hirata

Population inference of gravitational-wave catalogues is a useful tool to translate observations of black-hole mergers into constraints on compact-binary formation. Different formation channels predict identifiable signatures in the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2022-10-20 Matthew Mould , Davide Gerosa , Floor S. Broekgaarden , Nathan Steinle

Binary black holes are the primary endpoint of massive stellar evolution. Their properties provide a unique opportunity to constrain binary evolution, which is still poorly understood. In this paper, we predict the inventory of binary black…

Dense star clusters are thought to contribute significantly to the merger rates of stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) detected by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration. We combine $N$-body dynamic models of realistic dense star clusters…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-07 Claire S. Ye , Maya Fishbach , Kyle Kremer , Marta Reina-Campos

Supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth plausibly occurs via runaway astrophysical black hole mergers in nuclear star clusters that form intermediate mass black hole seeds at high redshifts. Such a model yields an order-of-magnitude higher…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-03-18 Konstantinos Kritos , Joseph Silk

If supermassive black holes (BHs) are generically present in galaxy centers, and if galaxies are built up through hierarchical merging, BH binaries are at least temporary features of most galactic bulges. Observations suggest, however, that…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-10-31 Andrew Gould , Hans-Walter Rix

We study a model in which supermassive black holes (SMBHs) can grow by the combined action of gas accretion on heavy seeds and mergers of both heavy (m_s^h=10^5 Msol) and light (m_s^l = 10^2 Msol) seeds. The former result from the direct…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2014-01-23 Andrea Petri , Andrea Ferrara , Ruben Salvaterra

We study a new channel for binary system formation involving stars and stellar-mass primordial black holes (PBHs) embedded in dark matter (DM) minihalos. In this scenario, binaries form when a star passes through the DM minihalo surrounding…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2025-08-18 Nicolas Esser

The growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) remains a central problem in astrophysics, with current observations providing only limited constraints on the underlying mechanisms. One possible growth channel is stellar accretion via the…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2026-02-13 Aubrey L. Jones , Benjamin C. Bromley

The existence of a mass gap of $3-5\,M_{\odot}$ between the heaviest neutron stars (NSs) and the lightest black holes (BHs), inferred from the BH mass distribution in low mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs), has been suggested for decades. The…

Massive black hole (MBH) binaries, formed as a result of galaxy mergers, are expected to harden by dynamical friction and three-body stellar scatterings, until emission of gravitational waves (GWs) leads to their final coalescence.…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2018-04-04 Elisa Bortolas , Alessia Gualandris , Massimo Dotti , Justin I. Read

When modeling the population of merging binary black holes, analyses have generally focused on characterizing the distribution of primary (i.e. more massive) black holes in the binary, while simplistic prescriptions are used for the…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-09-02 Amanda M. Farah , Maya Fishbach , Daniel E. Holz

The recent O4a release from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration, which significantly increased the number of gravitational-wave (GW) detections, reveals features with potentially important astrophysical implications. One notable example is a…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2026-04-22 Aleksandra Olejak

In this work, we investigate an alternative channel for the formation of fast-spinning black hole-neutron star (BHNS) binaries, in which super-Eddington accretion is expected to occur in accreting BHs during the stable mass transfer phase…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2024-02-26 Zhen-Han-Tao Wang , Rui-Chong Hu , Ying Qin , Jin-Ping Zhu , Bing Zhang , Shuang-Xi Yi , Qin-Wen Tang , Xin-Wen Shu , Fen Lyu , En-Wei Liang

By a method of population synthesis we construct a model of dark matter (DM) accretion onto binary black holes (BHs), and investigate the merger rate of the binary BHs. We find that the merger rate can weakly increase (less than 10\%).…

High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena · Physics 2018-08-15 Tongzheng Wang , Lin Li , Chunhua Zhu , Zhaojun Wang , Anzhong Wang , Qiang Wu , Hai-Shan Liu , Guoliang Lü