Related papers: Accurate Evolution of Orbiting Binary Black Holes
Astrophysical black holes could be nearly extremal (that is, rotating nearly as fast as possible); therefore, nearly extremal black holes could be among the binaries that current and future gravitational-wave observatories will detect.…
Merging supermassive black hole binaries is expected as a consequence of galaxy mergers, yet the detailed evolution path and underlying merging mechanisms of these binaries are still subject to large theoretical uncertainties. In this work,…
We analyze the dynamical evolution of binary stars that interact with a static background of single stars in the environment of a massive black hole (MBH). All stars are considered to be single mass, Newtonian point particles. We follow the…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHs) are a fascinating byproduct of galaxy mergers in the hierarchical universe. In the last stage of their orbital evolution, gravitational wave radiation drives the binary inspiral and produces the…
Binary black hole simulations starting from quasi-circular (i.e., zero radial velocity) initial data have orbits with small but non-zero orbital eccentricities. In this paper the quasi-equilibrium initial-data method is extended to allow…
Supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHs) are expected to result from galaxy mergers, and thus are natural byproducts (and probes) of hierarchical structure formation in the Universe. They are also the primary expected source of…
Approximate solutions to the Einstein field equations are a valuable tool to investigate gravitational phenomena. An important aspect of any approximation is to investigate and quantify its regime of validity. We present a study that…
We extend previous work on 3D black hole excision to the case of distorted black holes, with a variety of dynamic gauge conditions that are able to respond naturally to the spacetime dynamics. We show that the combination of excision and…
We analyse the formation and evolution of the event horizon of a black hole binary merger when the black holes are charged. We find that the presence of charge influences the properties of the merger and can be useful for investigating the…
Studying a centi-parsec supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB) would allow us to explore a new parameter space in active galactic nuclei, and these objects are also potential sources of gravitational waves. We report evidence that an SMBHB…
We study the formation of coalescing binary black holes via the evolution of isolated field binaries that go through the common envelope phase in order to obtain the combined distributions of the main observables of Advanced LIGO. We used a…
Numerical studies of gas accretion onto supermassive black hole binaries (SMBHBs) have generally been limited to conditions where the circumbinary disk (CBD) is 10-100 times thicker than expected for disks in active galactic nuclei (AGN).…
The spin is an important but poorly constrained parameter for describing supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Using the continuity equation of SMBH number density, we explicitly obtain the mass-dependent cosmological evolution of the radiative…
The observation of gravitational-wave signals from merging black-hole binaries enables direct measurement of the properties of the black holes. An individual observation allows measurement of the black-hole masses, but only limited…
The accretion-ejection activities of black holes play a vital role in shaping the Universe. Bright and recurrent black hole X-ray binaries are ideal objects for studying accretion physics across a wide range of accretion rates, providing…
We report on high-resolution simulations that explore the orbital decay of massive black hole (MBH) pairs with masses between $10^5$ and $10^7 M_{\odot}$ embedded in a circumnuclear gas disk (CND). An adiabatic equation of state is adopted,…
We present the results of 74 new simulations of nonprecessing spinning black hole binaries with mass ratios $q=m_1/m_2$ in the range $1/7\leq q\leq1$ and individual spins covering the parameter space $-0.95\leq\alpha_{1,2}\leq0.95$ with one…
We derive the mass function of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) over the redshift range 0<z<2, using the latest deep luminosity and mass functions of field galaxies. Applying this mass function, combined with the bolometric luminosity…
The recent discovery of GW150914, the binary black hole merger detected by Advanced LIGO, has the potential to revolutionize observational astrophysics. But to fully utilize this new window into the universe, we must compare these new…
Accurate modelling of black hole binaries is critical to achieve the science goals of gravitational-wave detectors. Modelling such configurations relies strongly on calibration to numerical-relativity (NR) simulations. Binaries on…