Related papers: Collisional dynamics around binary black holes in …
We present a novel method to study interacting orbits in a fixed mean gravitational field associated with a solution of the Einstein field equations. The idea is to consider the Newton gravity among the orbiting particles in a geometry…
We study the dynamics of merging compact binaries near a rotating supermassive black hole (SMBH) in a hierarchical triple configuration. We include various general relativistic effects that couple the inner orbit, the outer orbit and the…
We investigate whether a circumbinary gas disc can coalesce a supermassive black hole binary system in the centre of a galaxy. This is known to be problematic for a prograde disc. We show that in contrast, interaction with a retrograde…
We present a new, simple, fast algorithm to numerically evolve disks of inelastically colliding particles surrounding a central star. Our algorithm adds negligible computational cost to the fastest existing collisionless N-body codes, and…
In galactic nuclei, the gravitational potential is dominated by the central supermassive black hole, so stars follow quasi-Keplerian orbits. These orbits are distorted by gravitational forces from other stars, leading to long-term orbital…
Gravitational torques among objects orbiting a supermassive black hole drive the rapid reorientation of orbital planes in nuclear star clusters (NSCs), a process known as vector resonant relaxation. In this Letter, we determine the…
We perform a series of high-resolution 2D hydrodynamical simulations of equal-mass binary black holes (BBHs) embedded in active galactic nucleus (AGN) accretion disks to study whether these binaries can be driven to merger by the…
We have developed a new numerical code to simulate the joint evolution of a massive black hole (MBH) and a surrounding stellar cluster at the center of a galaxy. The physics treated in the simulations include: 2-body relaxation, stellar…
Dense star clusters are spectacular self-gravitating stellar systems in our Galaxy and across the Universe - in many respects. They populate disks and spheroids of galaxies as well as almost every galactic center. In massive elliptical…
We study the dynamics of colliding domain walls including self-gravity. The initial data is set up by applying a BPS domain wall in five-dimensional supergravity, and we evolve the system determining the final outcome of collisions. After a…
Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitous in galaxies with a sizable mass. It is expected that a pair of SMBHs originally in the nuclei of two merging galaxies would form a binary and eventually coalesce via a burst of gravitational…
Massive black holes (MBHs) with a mass below ~ 1e7 Msun are likely to reside at the centre of dense stellar nuclei shaped by 2-body relaxation, close interactions with the MBH and direct collisions. In this contribution, we stress the role…
We study the evolution of disk accretion during the merger of supermassive black hole binaries in galactic nuclei. In hierarchical galaxy formation models, the most common binaries are likely to arise from minor galactic mergers, and have…
Using SPH numerical simulations, we investigate the effects of gas on the inspiral and merger of a massive black hole binary. This study is motivated by the very massive nuclear gas disks observed in the central regions of merging galaxies.…
We study the dynamics of stellar-mass black holes (BH) in star clusters with particular attention to the formation of BH-BH binaries, which are interesting as sources of gravitational waves (GW). We examine the properties of these BH-BH…
We present a new approach to the problem of binary black holes in the pre-coalescence stage, i.e. when the notion of orbit has still some meaning. Contrary to previous numerical treatments which are based on the initial value formulation of…
Stellar-mass black holes (sBH) embedded in gaseous disks of active galactic nuclei (AGN) can be important sources of detectable gravitational radiation for LIGO/Virgo when they form binaries and coalesce due to orbital decay. In this paper,…
We explore the hardening of a massive black hole binary embedded in a circum-binary gas disc when the binary and the gas are coplanar and the gas is counter-rotating. The secondary black hole, revolving in the direction opposite to the gas,…
Dark matter around black holes can induce drag forces through dynamical friction and accretion, potentially affecting the orbital evolution and gravitational wave emission of binary systems. While dynamical friction from scalar field dark…
We report on key studies on the dynamics of black holes (BHs) in gas-rich galaxy mergers that underscore the vital role played by gas dissipation in promoting BH inspiral down to the smallest scales ever probed with use of high-resolution…