Related papers: Where Are Be/black-hole Binaries?
Circumbinary accretion occurs throughout the universe, from the formation of stars and planets to the aftermath of major galactic mergers. We present an extensive investigation of circumbinary accretion disks, studying circular binaries…
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…
We review the properties and behavior X-ray binaries that contain an accreting black hole. The larger majority of such systems are X-ray transients, and many of them were observed in daily pointings with RXTE throughout the course of their…
Accretion discs at sub-pc distances around supermassive black holes are likely to cool rapidly enough that self-gravity results in fragmentation. Here, we use high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations of a simplified disc model to study how…
Binary black holes may form both through isolated binary evolution and through dynamical interactions in dense stellar environments. The formation channel leaves an imprint on the alignment between the black hole spins and the orbital…
Inspired by the recent identification of the first candidate BH-WD X-ray binaries, where the compact accretors may be stellar-mass black hole candidates in extragalactic globular clusters, we explore how such binaries could be formed in a…
There remain significant uncertainties in the origin and evolution of black holes in binary systems, in particular regarding their birth sites and the influence of natal kicks. These are long-standing issues, but their debate has been…
We investigate interactions of stellar binaries in galactic nuclear clusters with a massive black hole (MBH). We consider binaries on highly eccentric orbits around the MBH that change due to random gravitational interactions with other…
Up to now, most stellar-mass black holes were discovered in X-ray emitting binaries, in which the black holes are formed through a common-envelope evolu tion. Here we give evidence for the presence of a massive black hole candidate as a…
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…
Rapid rotation is a fundamental characteristic of classical Be stars and a crucial property allowing for the formation of their circumstellar disks. Past evolution in a mass and angular momentum transferring binary system offers a plausible…
Observations of gravitational waves and their electromagnetic counterparts may soon uncover the existence of coalescing compact binary systems formed by a stellar-mass black hole and a neutron star. These mergers result in a remnant black…
We have performed population synthesis calculation on the formation of binaries containing a black hole (BH) and a neutron star (NS) in the Galactic disk. Some of important input parameters, especially for the treatment of common envelope…
Young binaries within dense molecular clouds are subject to dynamical friction from ambient gas. Consequently, their orbits decay, with both the separation and period decreasing in time. A simple analytic expression is derived for this…
Optical observations of normal-stars in binary systems with massive unseen objects have been proposed to search for candidate black holes (BHs) and provide a direct measurement of their dynamical masses. In this paper, we have performed…
Tight Triple Systems have stars in a hierarchical configuration with a third star orbiting the inner binary with a period of fewer than 1000 days. Such systems are important for understanding the formation and evolution of stars in multiple…
We show that under certain astrophysical conditions a binary system consisting of two compact objects can be stabilized against indefinite shrinking of orbits due to the emission of gravitational radiation. In this case, the lighter binary…
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 the first fully-nonlinear numerical study of the dynamics of highly spinning black-hole binaries. We evolve binaries from quasicircular orbits (as inferred from Post-Newtonian theory), and find that the last stages of the orbital…
Stellar mass black holes are formed in the field, and are observed in binaries. Population synthesis estimates for the formation of BH-PSR binaries suggest these may be observed, but with very large formal uncertainties in the formation…