Related papers: High-Spin BBH Subpopulation from AGN Accretion
Binary black holes embedded within the accretion disks that fuel active galactic nuclei (AGN) are promising progenitors for the source of gravitational wave events detected by LIGO/VIRGO. Several recent studies have shown that when these…
We study the formation of coalescing binary black holes via the evolution of isolated field binaries that go through the common envelope phase in order to obtain the combined distributions of the main observables of Advanced LIGO. We used a…
It remains an open question whether the binary black hole mergers observed with gravitational-wave detectors originate from the evolution of isolated massive binary stars or were dynamically driven by perturbations from the environment.…
The heaviest black holes discovered through gravitational waves have masses that are difficult to explain with current standard stellar models. This discrepancy may be due to a series of hierarchical mergers, where the observed black holes…
The growing sample of LIGO--Virgo black holes (BHs) opens new perspectives for the study of massive binary evolution. Here, we study the impact of mass accretion efficiency and common envelope on the properties of binary BH (BBH) mergers,…
With the growing number of detections of binary black hole mergers, we are beginning to probe structure in the distribution of masses. A recent study by Schneider et al. proposes that isolated binary evolution of stripped stars naturally…
We review current challenges in understanding the values and origin of the spins of black holes in binaries. Thanks to recent advances in astrophysical instrumentation, the spins can now be measured using both gravitational waves emitted by…
Interactions between a supermassive black hole binary and the surrounding accretion disc can both assist the binary inspiral and align the black hole spins to the disc angular momentum. While binary migration is due to angular-momentum…
The occurrence of dual active galactic nuclei (AGN) on scales of a few tens of kpc can be used to study merger-induced accretion on massive black holes (MBHs) and to derive clues on MBH mergers, using dual AGN as a parent population of…
The spins of merging binary black holes offer insights into their formation history. Recently it has been argued that in isolated binary evolution of two massive stars the firstborn black hole is slowly rotating, whilst the progenitor of…
The identification of the first confirmed neutron star - black hole (NS-BH) binary mergers by the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA collaboration provides the opportunity to investigate the properties of the early sample of confirmed and candidate…
We study the expected spin misalignments of merging binary black holes (BHs) formed in isolation by combining state-of-the-art population-synthesis models with efficient post-Newtonian evolutions, thus tracking sources from stellar…
Analyses of the growing catalog of binary black hole (BBH) mergers observed by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detectors are beginning to resolve features in their population-level mass, spin, and redshift distributions, revealing imprints of the…
We explore the possibility that GW190412, a binary black hole merger with a non-equal-mass ratio and significantly spinning primary, was formed through repeated black hole mergers in a dense super star cluster. Using a combination of…
This is the third paper in a series describing the spectroscopic properties of a sample of 39 AGN at $z \sim 1.5$, selected to cover a large range in black hole mass ($M_{BH}$) and Eddington ratio ($L/L_{Edd}$). In this paper, we continue…
The kinematic disturbances associated with major galaxy mergers are known to produce gas inflows, which in turn may trigger accretion onto the supermassive black holes (SMBH) of the participant galaxies. While this effect has been studied…
While the LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA (LVK) gravitational wave (GW) detectors have detected over 300 binary black hole (BBH) mergers to date, the first confirmation of an electromagnetic (EM) counterpart to such an event remains elusive. Previous…
The possible formation mechanisms of massive close binary black holes (BHs) that can merge in the Hubble time to produce powerful gravitational wave bursts detected during advanced LIGO O1 and O2 science runs include the evolution from…
We quantify the importance of mass accretion during AGN phases in the growth of supermassive black holes (BH) by comparing the mass function of black holes in the local universe with that expected from AGN relics, which are black holes…
We present the results of a systematic study of the formation and evolution of binaries containing black holes and normal-star companions with a wide range of masses. We first reexamine the standard formation scenario for close black-hole…