Related papers: Hydrodynamic Drag on a Compact Star Orbiting a Sup…
We suggest that most nearby active galactic nuclei are fed by a series of small--scale, randomly--oriented accretion events. Outside a certain radius these events promote rapid star formation, while within it they fuel the supermassive…
Multiple models have been suggested over the years to explain the structure and support of accretion disks around supermassive black holes, from the standard thin thermal-pressure-dominated $\alpha$-disk model to more recent models that…
Gravitational perturbations of neutron stars and black holes are well known sources of gravitational radiation. If the compact object is immersed in or endowed with a magnetic field, the gravitational perturbations would couple to…
In this paper we perform a multi-messenger investigation of the efficiency of stellar scattering in tightening supermassive black hole binaries by jointly comparing models to the observed galaxy stellar core population and to results of…
This work is the first in a series of studies aimed at understanding the dynamics of highly eccentric binary neutron stars, and constructing an appropriate gravitational-waveform model for detection. Such binaries are possible sources for…
(Abridged) To gain insight into the dynamical influence of a supermassive black hole binary on a circumbinary accretion disk, we investigate the binary and viscous torque densities throughout such a disk, with emphasis on the final density…
Several physical and astrophysical problems related to accretion onto black holes and neutron stars are shortly reviewed. I discuss the observed differences between these two types of compact objects in quiescent Soft X-ray Transients. Then…
We posit that accreting compact objects, including stellar mass black holes and neutron stars as well as supermassive black holes, may undergo extended periods of accretion during which the angular momentum of the disk at large scales is…
We consider the emission of gravitational waves in the two proposed models for the collapse of a massive star to a black hole: the prompt collapse, in which nearly all the star collapses to a black hole in a dynamical time scale, and the…
Gravitational wave observation has provided numerous insights into the merger of astrophysical black holes. In contrast to other violent events (e.g. supernovae), they are, however, not expected to lead to significant emissions of photons…
We review the state of the evidence for the existence and observational appearance of supermassive black hole binaries. Such objects are expected from standard hierarchical galaxy evolution to form after two galaxies, each containing a…
Gravitational Wave Astronomy is becoming a reality as Earth-based interferometric gravitational-wave detectors reach the design sensitivities and move towards advanced configurations that may lead to gravitational-wave detections in the…
The inspiral of supermassive black-hole binaries in gas-rich environment is driven by the presence of an accretion disc and viscous interactions tend to align the spin of the black holes with the orbital angular momentum of the disc. Recent…
The emission of gravitational waves from a system of massive objects interacting on elliptical, hyperbolic and parabolic orbits is studied in the quadrupole approximation. Analytical expressions are then derived for the gravitational wave…
We consider misaligned accretion discs formed after tidal disruption events occurring when a star encounters a supermassive rotating black hole. We use the linear theory of warped accretion discs to find the disc shape when the stream…
In this work, we numerically explore the dynamics of a point mass (e.g., a stellar-mass black hole) moving within a thin accretion disk of a massive object (i.e., a supermassive black hole) with three dimensional hydrodynamical simulations…
We study the superradiant scattering of gravitational waves by a nearly extremal black hole (dimensionless spin $a=0.99$) by numerically solving the full Einstein field equations, thus including backreaction effects. This allows us to study…
Numerical models of gas inflow towards a supermassive black hole (SMBH) show that star formation may occur in such an environment through the growth of a gravitationally unstable gas disc. We consider the effect of nuclear activity on such…
Inspiralling binary systems of neutron stars or black holes are promising sources of gravitational radiation detectable by large-scale laser interferometric gravitational observatories, such as the US LIGO and Italian-French VIRGO projects.…
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…