Related papers: Supermassive binary black holes among cosmic gamma…
Galactic nuclei are often found to contain young stellar populations and, in most cases, a central supermassive black hole (SMBH). Most known massive stars are found in binaries or higher-multiplicity systems, and in a galactic nucleus the…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) are an inevitable consequence of galaxy mergers. At subparsec separations, they are practically impossible to resolve, and the most promising technique is to search for quasars with periodic…
The coalescence of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) should generate the strongest sources of gravitational waves (GWs) in the Universe. However, the dynamics of their coalescence is the subject of much debate. In this study, we use a suite…
Gravitational wave detectors are observing an increasing number of binary black hole (BBH) mergers, revealing a bimodal mass distribution of BBHs, which hints at diverse formation histories for these systems. Using the rapid binary…
The radio galaxy 0402+379 is believed to host a supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB). The two compact core sources are separated by a projected distance of 7.3 pc, making it the most (spatially) compact resolved SMBHB known. We present…
Galaxy mergers are common processes in the Universe. As a large fraction of galaxies hosts at their centres a central supermassive black hole (SMBH), mergers can lead to the formation of a supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB). The…
It has been proposed that when the peaks of the broad emission lines in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) are significantly blueshifted or redshifted from the systemic velocity of the host galaxy, this could be a consequence of orbital motion…
The self-lensing of a massive black hole binary (MBHB), which occurs when the two BHs are aligned close to the line of sight, is expected to produce periodic, short-duration flares. Here we study the shapes of self-lensing flares (SLFs) via…
The dynamical assembly of binary black holes (BBHs) in dense star clusters (SCs) is one of the most promising pathways for producing observable gravitational wave (GW) sources, however several other formation scenarios likely operate as…
Using archival VLBI data for 3114 radio-luminous active galactic nuclei, we searched for binary supermassive black holes using a radio spectral index mapping technique which targets spatially resolved, double radio-emitting nuclei. Only one…
The coalescence of massive black hole binaries (BHBs) in galactic mergers is the primary source of gravitational waves (GWs) at low frequencies. Current estimates of GW detection rates for the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna and the…
Supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries residing at the core of merging galaxies are recently found to be strongly affected by the rotation of their host galaxies. The highly eccentric orbits that form when the host is counterrotating emit…
We consider the formation of binary black hole mergers through the evolution of field massive triple stars. In this scenario, favorable conditions for the inspiral of a black hole binary are initiated by its gravitational interaction with a…
A natural consequence of the galaxy formation paradigm is the existence of supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries. Gravitational perturbations from a far-away SMBH companion can induce high orbital eccentricities on dark matter particles…
The coalescence of massive black hole (BH) binaries due to galaxy mergers provides a primary source of low-frequency gravitational radiation detectable by pulsar timing measurements and by the proposed LISA (Laser Interferometry Space…
The discovery of the gravitational-wave source GW150914 with the Advanced LIGO detectors provides the first observational evidence for the existence of binary black-hole systems that inspiral and merge within the age of the Universe. Such…
Despite a decade's worth of gravitational wave observation, the origin of the binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by the LIGO-VIRGO-Kagra (LVK) collaboration remains an open question. Towards assessing the feasibility and prevalence of…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) in the 10 million to 10 billion $M_\odot$ range form in galaxy mergers, and live in galactic nuclei with large and poorly constrained concentrations of gas and stars. There are currently no…
We investigate the expected gravitational wave emission from coalescing supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries resulting from mergers of their host galaxies. When galaxies merge, the SMBHs in the host galaxies sink to the center of the new…
We model for the first time the complete orbital evolution of a pair of Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) in a 1:10 galaxy merger of two disk dominated gas-rich galaxies, from the stage prior to the formation of the binary up to the onset of…