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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Utah State University

Astrophysics and Astronomy

Black hole physics

Publication Year

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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Constraining The Black Hole Mass Spectrum With Gravitational Wave Observations – I. The Error Kernel, Danny C. Jacobs, Joseph E. Plowman, Ronald W. Hellings, Sachiko Tsuruta, Shane L. Larson Feb 2010

Constraining The Black Hole Mass Spectrum With Gravitational Wave Observations – I. The Error Kernel, Danny C. Jacobs, Joseph E. Plowman, Ronald W. Hellings, Sachiko Tsuruta, Shane L. Larson

All Physics Faculty Publications

Many scenarios have been proposed for the origin of the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that are found in the centres of most galaxies. Many of these formation scenarios predict a high-redshift population of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), with masses M in the range 102M≲ 105 M. A powerful way to observe these IMBHs is via gravitational waves the black holes emit as they merge. The statistics of the observed black hole population should, in principle, allow us to discriminate between competing astrophysical scenarios for the origin and formation of SMBHs. However, …


Gravitational Wave Bursts From The Galactic Massive Black Hole, Clovis Hopman, Marc Freitag, Shane L. Larson Jun 2007

Gravitational Wave Bursts From The Galactic Massive Black Hole, Clovis Hopman, Marc Freitag, Shane L. Larson

All Physics Faculty Publications

The Galactic massive black hole (MBH), with a mass of M= 3.6 × 106 M, is the closest known MBH, at a distance of only 8 kpc. The proximity of this MBH makes it possible to observe gravitational waves (GWs) from stars with periapse in the observational frequency window of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). This is possible even if the orbit of the star is very eccentric, so that the orbital frequency is many orders of magnitude below the LISA frequency window, as suggested by Rubbo, Holley-Bockelmann & Finn (2006). …