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Major galaxy mergers can trigger nuclear activities and are responsible for high-luminosity quasi-stellar objects /active galactic nuclei (QSOs/AGNs). In certain circumstances, such mergers may cause dual active galactic nuclei (dAGN)…
Black hole (BH) mergers driven by gravitational perturbations of external companions constitute an important class of formation channels for merging BH binaries detected by LIGO. We have studied the orbital and spin evolution of binary BHs…
Most stellar evolution models predict that black holes (BHs) should not exist above approximately $50-70$ M$_\odot$, the lower limit of the pair-instability mass gap. However, recent LIGO/Virgo detections indicate the existence of BHs with…
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…
Binary supermassive black holes are produced by galactic mergers as the black holes from the two galaxies fall to the center of the merged system and form a bound pair. The two black holes will eventually coalesce in an enormous burst of…
The spin of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) is directly related to the radiative efficiency of accretion on to the hole, and therefore impacts the amount of fuel required for the black hole to reach a certain mass. Thus, a knowledge of the…
The recent binary black hole (BBH) merger GW231123 consisted of the merger of two intermediate mass black holes (IMBH) which appear to have large spin magnitudes. Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are very promising environments for IMBH mergers…
We review the state of the evidence for the existence and observational appearance of supermassive black hole binaries. Such objects are expected from standard hierarchical galaxy evolution to form after two galaxies, each containing a…
We show that Massive Black Holes of AGNs follow the same approximately linear relation with the luminosity of the host spheroid (bulge) found in normal (quiescent) galaxies, with the black hole mass being ~0.002 that of the bulge. We also…
Black hole (BH) triples represent one of the astrophysical pathways for BH mergers in the Universe detectable by LIGO and VIRGO. We study the formation of BH triples via binary-binary encounters in dense clusters, showing that one-third of…
Pairs of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at different stages are natural results of galaxy mergers in the hierarchical framework of galaxy formation and evolution. However, identifications of close binaries of SMBHs (CB-SMBHs) with…
Stellar-mass binary black holes (BBHs) embedded in active galactic nucleus (AGN) discs are possible progenitors of black-hole mergers detected in gravitational waves by LIGO/VIRGO. To better understand the hydrodynamical evolution of BBHs…
Primordial black holes (PBHs) have been proposed to explain at least a portion of dark matter. Observations have put strong constraints on PBHs in terms of the fraction of dark matter which they can represent, $f_{\rm PBH}$, across a wide…
Massive black hole binaries are naturally predicted in the context of the hierarchical model of structure formation. The binaries that manage to lose most of their angular momentum can coalesce to form a single remnant. In the last stages…
Measuring of the masses of galactic supermassive black holes (SMBHs) is an important task, since they correlate with the host galaxy properties and play an important role in evolution of galaxies. Here we present a new method for measuring…
It is commonly assumed that in black hole accretion disks the angular momenta of the disk and the black hole are aligned. However, for a significant fraction of stellar mass black holes and supermassive black holes, the momenta may not be…
Coalescing massive black hole binaries are powerful emitters of gravitational waves, in the LISA sensitivity range for masses M_BH ~ 10^{4-7} M_sun. According to hierarchical galaxy merger models, binary black holes should form frequently,…
Black hole mergers detectable with LIGO can occur in active galactic nucleus (AGN) disks. Here we parameterize the merger rates, the mass spectrum and the spin spectrum of black holes (BH) in AGN disks. The predicted merger rate spans $\sim…
The presence of dual active galactic nuclei (AGN) on scales of a few tens of kpc can be used to study merger-induced accretion on supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and offer insights about SMBH mergers, using dual AGNs as merger precursors.…
An intrinsically narrow line emitted by an accretion disk around a black hole appears broadened and skewed as a result of the Doppler effect and gravitational redshift. The fluorescent iron line in the X-ray band at 6.4-6.9keV is the…