Related papers: Binary Disruption by Massive Black Holes in Globul…
The presence of young massive stars orbiting on eccentric rings within a few tenths of a parsec of the supermassive black hole in the Galactic centre is challenging for theories of star formation. The high tidal shear from the black hole…
We analyze the observed distribution of the orbital eccentricity and period of binary radio pulsars in globular clusters using computational tools to simulate binary-single star interactions. Globular clusters have different groups of…
Recent measurements of the Chandra satellite have shown that a supermassive black hole of $M = 2.6 \times 10^{6} M_{\odot}$ is located in the Galactic Center; it seems probable that, from other observations, this fact is common in the…
We develop a formalism for studying the dynamics of massive black hole binaries embedded in gravitationally-bound stellar cusps, and study the binary orbital decay by three-body interactions, the impact of stellar slingshots on the density…
Sun-like stars are thought to be regularly disrupted by supermassive black holes (SMBHs) within galactic nuclei. Yet, as stars evolve off the main sequence their vulnerability to tidal disruption increases drastically as they develop a…
Black holes in binaries with other compact objects can provide natural venues for indirect detection of axions or other ultralight fields. The superradiant instability associated with a rapidly spinning black hole leads to the creation of…
The centers of galaxies host a supermassive black hole surrounded by a dense stellar cluster. The cluster is expected to develop mass segregation, in which gravitational scatterings among the stars cause heavier objects to sink closer to…
Ultralight scalars can extract rotational energy from astrophysical black holes through superradiant instabilities, forming macroscopic boson clouds. This process is most efficient when the Compton wavelength of the boson is comparable to…
We study the probability of close encounters between stars from a nuclear cluster and a massive black hole. The gravitational field of the system is dominated by the black hole in its sphere of influence. It is further modified by the…
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…
As the sensitivity of gravitational wave (GW) instruments improves and new networks start operating, hundreds of merging stellar-mass black holes (SBHs) and intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are expected to be observed in the next few…
In the high density cores of globular clusters, multibody interactions are expected to be common, with the result that black holes in binaries are hardened by interactions. It was shown by Sigurdsson & Hernquist (1993) and others that 10…
Binaries consisting of a pulsar and a black hole (BH) are a holy grail of astrophysics, both for their significance for stellar evolution and for their potential application as probes of strong gravity. In spite of extensive surveys of our…
The merger of two neutron stars will in general lead to the formation of a torus surrounding a black hole whose rotational energy can be tapped to potentially power a short gamma-ray burst. We have studied the merger of equal-mass binaries…
The population of binary black hole mergers identified through gravitational waves has uncovered unexpected features in the intrinsic properties of black holes in the universe. One particularly surprising and exciting result is the possible…
The multitude of binary black hole coalescence detections in gravitational waves has renewed our interest on environments that can be the cradle of these mergers. In this work we study merger rates of binary black holes in globular clusters…
Tidal Disruption of stars by supermassive central black holes from dense rotating star clusters is modelled by high-accuracy direct N-body simulation. As in a previous paper on spherical star clusters we study the time evolution of the…
Massive black holes have been discovered in all closely examined galaxies with high velocity dispersion. The case is not as clear for lower-dispersion systems such as low-mass galaxies and globular clusters. Here we suggest that above a…
Although neutron star-black hole binaries have been identified through mergers detected in gravitational waves, a pulsar-black hole binary has yet to be detected. While short-period binaries are detectable due to a clear signal in the…
I overview the current understanding of the evolution of massive black hole (MBH) binaries in the center of the host stellar system. One of the main questions is whether the stellar dynamical effect can make the MBH binary hard enough that…