Related papers: Accurate Evolution of Orbiting Binary Black Holes
Gravitational waves from merging binary black holes can be used to shed light on poorly understood aspects of massive binary stellar evolution, such as the evolution of massive stars (including their mass-loss rates), the common envelope…
Mass transfer in binary systems is the key process in the formation of various classes of objects, including merging binary black holes (BBHs) and neutron stars. Orbital evolution during mass transfer depends on how much mass is accreted…
Massive black hole binaries (BHBs) are expected to be one of the most powerful sources of gravitational waves (GWs) in the frequency range of the pulsar timing array and of forthcoming space-borne detectors. They are believed to form in the…
While the Advanced LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave experiments now regularly observe binary black hole mergers, the evolutionary origin of these events remains a mystery. Analysis of the binary black hole spin distribution may shed light…
While supermassive binary black holes inspiral toward merger they may also experience significant accretion of matter from a surrounding disk. We study the dynamics of this system, simultaneously describing the evolving spacetime and…
We present single and binary black hole simulations that follow the moving puncture paradigm of simulating black-hole spacetimes without excision, and use moving boxes mesh refinement. Focussing on binary black hole configurations where the…
Astrophysically realistic black holes may have spins that are nearly extremal (i.e., close to 1 in dimensionless units). Numerical simulations of binary black holes are important tools both for calibrating analytical templates for…
A superradiant cloud of ultralight bosons near a rotating black hole provides a smoking gun for particle physics in the infrared. However, tidal perturbations from a nearby binary companion can destabilise the boson cloud and even terminate…
In this work, we use general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations to explore the effect of spin orientation on the dynamics of gas in the vicinity of merging black holes. We present a suite of eight simulations of unequal-mass,…
[ABRIDGED] We study supermassive black hole binary mergers driven by angular momentum loss to small-scale gas discs. Such binaries form after major galaxy mergers, but their fate is unclear since hardening through stellar scattering becomes…
We present new 10.4m-GTC/OSIRIS spectroscopic observations of the black hole X-ray binary \mbox{XTE J1118+480} that confirm the orbital period decay at $\dot P=-1.90\pm0.57$ ms yr$^{-1}$. This corresponds to a period change of…
We present results on the mass and spin of the final black hole from mergers of equal mass, spinning black holes. The study extends over a broad range of initial orbital configurations, from direct plunges to quasi-circular inspirals to…
Spin measurement of the 6.5 billion solar mass black hole in M87 from the Event Horizon Telescope image is the latest in a series that span a wide range in values, but that tend to share the feature of co-rotation between the accretion flow…
Multiple approaches are required to study the evolution of black-hole binaries. While the post-Newtonian approximation is sufficient to describe the early inspiral (even from infinitely large orbital separation), only numerical relativity…
Compact object binaries (a black hole or a neutron star orbiting a non-degenerate stellar companion) are key to our understanding of late massive star evolution, in addition to being some of the best probes of extreme gravity and accretion…
We investigate evolution of an accretion disc in binary black hole (BBH) systems and possible electromagnetic counterparts of the gravitational waves from mergers of BBHs. Perna et al. (2016) proposed a novel evolutionary scenario of an…
Binary black holes are the primary endpoint of massive stellar evolution. Their properties provide a unique opportunity to constrain binary evolution, which is still poorly understood. In this paper, we predict the inventory of binary black…
We characterize the expected statistical errors with which the parameters of black-hole binaries can be measured from gravitational-wave (GW) observations of their inspiral, merger and ringdown by a network of second-generation ground-based…
Coalescence of binary supermassive black holes (SBHs) would constitute the strongest sources of gravitational waves to be observed by LISA. While the formation of binary SBHs during galaxy mergers is almost inevitable, coalescence requires…
The advent of gravitational-wave astronomy is now allowing for the study of compact binary merger demographics throughout the Universe. This information can be leveraged as tools for understanding massive stars, their environments, and…