Related papers: Black hole mass and spin coevolution by mergers
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…
Black holes are popping up all over the place: in compact binary X-ray sources and GRBs, in quasars, AGNs and the cores of all bulge galaxies, in binary black holes and binary black hole-neutron stars, and maybe even in the LHC! Black holes…
Most galaxies have central massive black holes (BH), and merge with others during their evolution, as strongly suggested by recent observations. Consequently a black hole binary (BHB) emerges. Considering the evolution of the binary when it…
Coalescing massive black hole binaries are produced by the mergers of galaxies. The final stages of the black hole coalescence produce strong gravitational radiation that can be detected by the space-borne LISA. In cases where the black…
Supermassive black holes have been detected in all galaxies that contain bulge components when the galaxies observed were close enough so that the searches were feasible. Together with the observation that bigger black holes live in bigger…
Astronomers have discovered two populations of black holes: (i) stellar-mass black holes with masses in the range 5 to 30 solar masses, millions of which are present in each galaxy in the universe, and (ii) supermassive black holes with…
Binary supermassive black holes form naturally in galaxy mergers, but their long-term evolution is uncertain. In spherical galaxies, N-body simulations show that binary evolution stalls at separations much too large for significant emission…
Almost every galaxy in the local Universe is observed to have a massive black hole in the centre. The properties of these black holes are observed to tightly correlate with those of their host galaxy which has been interpreted as…
Gravitational waves carry away both energy and angular momentum as binary black holes inspiral and merge. The relative efficiency with which they are radiated determines whether the final black hole of mass $M_f$ and spin $S_f$ saturates…
In dense stellar environments, the merger products of binary black hole mergers may undergo additional mergers. These hierarchical mergers are predicted to have higher masses than the first generation of black holes made from stars. The…
We review the main physical processes that lead to the formation of stellar binary black holes (BBHs) and to their merger. BBHs can form from the isolated evolution of massive binary stars. The physics of core-collapse supernovae and the…
Coalescence of binary supermassive black holes (SBHs) would constitute the strongest sources of gravitational waves to be observed by LISA. While the formation of binary SBHs during galaxy mergers is almost inevitable, coalescence requires…
The study of the dynamical evolution of massive black hole pairs in mergers is crucial in the context of a hierarchical galaxy formation scenario. The timescales for the formation and the coalescence of black hole binaries are still poorly…
Recent studies of accretion onto supermassive black hole binaries suggest that much, perhaps most, of the matter eventually accretes onto one hole or the other. If so, then for binaries whose inspiral from ~1 pc to 0.001 - 0.01 pc is driven…
The vast majority of massive binary systems in the universe is evidently unsuited to produce merging binary black holes. However, several narrow evolutionary paths of isolated massive binaries towards this goal have recently been…
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…
Modern astrophysical methods of determination of spins of rotating stellar-mass black hole in close binaries and of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei are briefly discussed. Effective spins of coalescing binary black holes…
We examine the intrinsic scatter in the correlation between black hole masses and their host bulge masses, and find that it cannot be accounted for by mergers alone. A simple merger scenario of small galaxies leads to a proportionality…
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…
In this article we consider the formation and evolution of black holes, especially those in binary stars where radiation from the matter falling on them can be seen. We consider a number of effects introduced by some of us, which are not…