Related papers: Massive perturbers in the galactic center
Supermassive binary black holes (SMBBHs) are the anticipated byproducts of galaxy mergers and play a pivotal role in shaping galaxy evolution, gravitational wave emissions, and accretion physics. Despite their theoretical prevalence, direct…
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…
Centers of galaxies host both a supermassive black hole and a dense stellar cluster. Such an environment should lead to stellar collisions, possibly at very high velocities so that the total energy involved is of the same order as…
We consider the origin of the so-called S stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the very center of the Galaxy. These are usually assumed to be massive main-sequence stars. We argue instead that they are the remnants of…
Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies occasionally disrupt stars or consume stellar-mass black holes (BHs) that wander too close, producing observable electromagnetic or gravitational wave signals. We examine how mass…
The tidal disruption of stars in the vicinity of massive black holes is discussed in the context of $\Lambda$-gravity. The latter provides an explanation to the Hubble tension as a possible consequence of two Hubble flows, the local and…
There is both theoretical expectation and some observational clues that intermediate mass black holes reside in nuclei of globular clusters. In order to find an independent indicator for their existence, we investigate in this paper how an…
The history of star formation in the strong gravitational potential of the Galactic center has been of much interest, recently. We propose that the sub-parsec-scale disk of massive stars orbiting the massive black hole at the Galactic…
We develop a semi-analytic model to investigate how accretion onto wide low-mass binary stars can result in a close high-mass binary system. The key ingredient is to allow mass accretion while limiting the gain in angular momentum. We…
The centers of most known galaxies host supermassive black holes (SMBHs). In orbit around these black holes are a centrally-concentrated distribution of stars, both in single and in binary systems. Occasionally, these stars are perturbed…
Recent gravitational wave (GW) observations of binary black hole (BH) mergers and the stochastic GW background have triggered renewed interest in primordial black holes (PBHs) in the stellar-mass ($\sim 10 - 100\ \rm M_\odot$) and…
The present paper reviews massive star (initial mass smaller than 120 M0) and very massive star (initial mass larger than 120 M0) evolution. I will focus on evolutionary facts and questions that may critically affect predictions of…
Massive black hole (MBH) binaries, formed as a result of galaxy mergers, are expected to harden by dynamical friction and three-body stellar scatterings, until emission of gravitational waves (GWs) leads to their final coalescence.…
Massive stars blow powerful winds and eventually explode as supernovae. By doing so, they inject energy and momentum in the circumstellar medium, which is pushed away from the star and piles up to form a dense and expanding shell of gas.…
Massive stellar clumps in high redshift galaxies interact and migrate to the center to form a bulge and exponential disk in <1 Gyr. Here we consider the fate of intermediate mass black holes (BHs) that might form by massive-star coalescence…
Since a black hole does not emit light from its interior, nor does it have a surface on which light from nearby sources can be reflected, observational study of black hole physics requires observing the gravitational impact of the black…
The formation of supermassive black holes (SMBH) is intimately related to galaxy formation, although precisely how remains a mystery. I speculate that formation of, and feedback from, SMBH may alleviate problems that have arisen in our…
Massive black holes are ubiquitous, occurring at the centres of all massive galaxies and possibly many low mass ones. They are no ornament which just happens to be there, but play a role vital to the growth and structure of the host galaxy.…
We explore how the co-evolution of massive black holes (MBHs) and galaxies is affected by environmental effects, addressing in particular MBHs hosted in the central galaxies of clusters (we will refer to these galaxies in general as 'CGs').…
Supermassive black holes are found in most galactic nuclei. A large fraction of these nuclei also contain a nuclear stellar cluster surrounding the black hole. Here we consider the idea that the nuclear stellar cluster formed first and that…