Related papers: Gravitational Waves from Hyper-Accretion onto Nasc…
The merger of two massive 30 Msun black holes has been detected in gravitational waves (1,GW150914). This discovery validates recent predictions (2-4) that massive binary black holes would constitute the first detection. However, previous…
Recent studies have focused on how spinning black holes (BHs) within a binary system containing a strongly magnetized neutron star, then immersed in external magnetic fields, can acquire charge through mechanisms like the Wald process and…
We discuss a novel mechanism to generate gravitational waves in the early universe. A standard way to produce primordial black holes is to enhance at small-scales the overdensity perturbations generated during inflation. The latter, upon…
Light bosons can form a gravitational atom (GA) around a spinning black hole through the superradiance process. Considering the black hole to be part of a binary system, the tidal potential of the companion periodically perturbs the GA such…
Gravitational waves (GWs) from presumed binary black hole mergers are now being detected on a regular basis with the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo interferometers. Exotic compact objects (ECOs) have been proposed that differ from Kerr…
We consider the combined role of the thermal ionization, magneto-rotational and gravitational instabilities in thin accretion disks around supermassive black holes. We find that in the portions of the disk unstable to the ionization…
Binary black holes can form efficiently in dense young stellar clusters, such as the progenitors of globular clusters, via a combination of gravitational segregation and cluster evaporation. We use simple analytic arguments supported by…
We present an analytic framework demonstrating that a spinning black hole endowed with a net magnetic charge exhibits a dramatically amplified superradiant instability against charged scalar fields, enhanced by several orders of magnitude…
Orientation of parsec-scale accretion disks in AGN is likely to be nearly random for different black hole feeding episodes. Since AGN accretion disks are unstable to self-gravity on parsec scales, star formation in these disks will create…
The inspiral and merger of black-hole binary systems are a promising source of gravitational waves. The most effective method to look for a signal with a well understood waveform, such as the binary black hole signal, is matched filtering…
The rather elusive High-Frequency Quasi-Periodic Oscillations(HFQPO) observed in the X-ray lightcurve of black holes have been seen in a wide range of frequencies, even within one source. It is also notable to have been detected in "pairs"…
The process of superradiance can extract angular momentum and energy from astrophysical black holes (BHs) to populate gravitationally-bound states with an exponentially large number of light bosons. We analytically calculate superradiant…
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 time evolution and gravitational wave emission properties of a black hole orbiting {\it inside} an accretion disk surrounding a massive black hole. We simultaneously solve the structure equations of the accretion disk in presence…
Context: Some apparently quiescent supermassive black holes (BHs) at centers of galaxies show quasi-periodic eruptions (QPEs) in the X-ray band, the nature of which is still unknown. A possible origin for the eruptions is an accretion disk,…
Superradiance clouds of kinetically-mixed dark photons around spinning black holes can produce observable multi-messenger electromagnetic and gravitational wave signals. The cloud generates electric fields of up to a Teravolt-per-meter,…
We perform a full 3D general relativistic magnetohydrodynamical (GRMHD) simulation of an equal-mass, spinning, binary black hole approaching merger, surrounded by a circumbinary disk and with mini-disks around each black hole. For this…
Mergers of black-hole binaries are expected to release large amounts of energy in the form of gravitational radiation. However, binary evolution models predict merger rates too low to be of observational interest. In this paper we explore…
Accretion onto supermassive black holes produces both the dramatic phenomena associated with active galactic nuclei and the underwhelming displays seen in the Galactic Center and most other nearby galaxies. I review selected aspects of the…
Binary black hole (BBH) mergers are the primary sources of gravitational wave (GW) events detected by LIGO/Virgo. Binary black holes embedded in the accretion discs of active galactic nuclei (AGN) are possible candidates for such GW events.…