GW200105 and GW200115 are compatible with a scenario of primordial black hole binary coalescences

Two gravitational wave events, i.e. GW200105 and GW200115, were observed by the Advanced LIGO and Virgo detectors recently. In this work, we show that they can be explained by a scenario of primordial black hole binaries that are formed in the early Universe. The merger rate predicted by such a scenario could be consistent with the one estimated from LIGO and Virgo, even if primordial black holes constitute a fraction of cold dark matter. The required abundance of primordial black holes is compatible with the existing upper limits from microlensing, caustic crossing and cosmic microwave background observations.

The Eccentric Nature of Eccentric Tidal Disruption Events

Upon entering the tidal sphere of a supermassive black hole, a star is ripped apart by tides and transformed into a stream of debris. The ultimate fate of that debris, and the properties of the bright flare that is produced and observed, depends on a number of parameters, including the energy of the center of mass of the original star. Here we present the results of a set of smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations in which a 1M ⊙, γ = 5/3 polytrope is disrupted by a 106 M ⊙ supermassive black hole. Each simulation has a pericenter distance of r p = r t (i.e., β ≡ r t/r p = 1 with r t the tidal radius), and we vary the eccentricity e of the stellar orbit from e = 0.8 up to e = 1.20 and study the nature of the fallback of debris onto the black hole and the long-term fate of the unbound material. For simulations with eccentricities e ≲ 0.98, the fallback curve has a distinct, three-peak structure that is induced by self-gravity. For simulations with eccentricities e ≳ 1.06, the core of the disrupted star reforms following its initial disruption. Our results have implications for, e.g., tidal disruption events produced by supermassive black hole binaries.

On the dynamics of the torus around the kicked black hole

There is a special interest to understand the dynamical properties of the accretion disk created around the newly formed black hole due to the supermassive black hole binaries which merge inside the gaseous disk. The newly formed black hole would have a kick velocity up to thousands of km/s that drives a perturbation on a newly accreted torus around the black hole. Some of the observed supermassive black holes at the center of the Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) move with a certain velocity relative to its broader accretion disk. In this paper, the effects of the kicked black holes onto the infinitesimally thin accreted torus are studied by using the general relativistic hydrodynamical code, focusing on changing the dynamics of the accretion disk during the accretion disk–black hole interaction. We have found that the non-axisymmetric global mode [Formula: see text] inhomogeneity, which causes a spiral-wave-structure, is excited on the torus due to kicked black hole. The higher the perturbation velocity produced by the kicked black hole, the longer the time the torus takes to reach the saturation point. The created spiral density waves which rapidly evolve into the spiral shocks are also observed from the numerical simulations. The spiral shock is responsible for accreting matter toward the black hole. First, the spiral-wave-structure is developed and the accretion through the spiral arms is stopped around the black hole. At the later time of simulation, the formed spiral shocks partly cause the angular momentum loss across the torus.

Principles of Gravitational-Wave Detection with Pulsar Timing Arrays

Pulsar timing uses the highly stable pulsar spin period to investigate many astrophysical topics. In particular, pulsar timing arrays make use of a set of extremely well-timed pulsars and their time correlations as a challenging detector of gravitational waves. It turns out that pulsar timing arrays are particularly sensitive to ultra-low-frequency gravitational waves, which makes them complementary to other gravitational-wave detectors. Here, we summarize the basics, focusing especially on supermassive black-hole binaries and cosmic strings, which have the potential to form a stochastic gravitational-wave background in the pulsar timing array detection band, and the scientific goals on this challenging topic. We also briefly outline the recent interesting results of the main pulsar timing array collaborations, which have found strong evidence of a common-spectrum process compatible with a stochastic gravitational-wave background and mention some new perspectives that are particularly interesting in view of the forthcoming radio observatories such as the Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, the MeerKAT telescope, and the Square Kilometer Array.

Probing Ultralight Bosons with Compact Eccentric Binaries

Ultralight bosons can be abundantly produced through superradiance process by a spinning black hole and form a bound state with hydrogen-like spectrum. We show that such a gravitational atom typically possesses anomalously large mass quadrupole and leads to significant orbital precession when it forms an eccentric binary with a second compact object. Dynamically formed black hole binaries or pulsar-black hole binaries are typically eccentric during their early inspirals. We show that the large orbital precession can generate distinct and observable signature in their gravitational wave or pulsar timing signals.