12.04.2016 16:15

Ecology of stellar-mass black holes in globular clusters and implications for gravitational-wave radiation

Sambaran Banerjee (Uni Bonn)

Black holes in densely packed ensembles of stars such as globular clusters and massive open clusters has always drawn attention due to their potential in giving rise to a number of astrophysical and high-energy phenomena. And at present, the interest has rejuvenated due to the first detection of gravitational waves from a merging pair of black holes by the Advanced LIGO detector, namely the GW150914 event. Such “stellar-mass” black holes form due to the collapse of massive stars after their nuclear fuel has exhausted, and a fraction of them remain trapped in the stellar cluster by the latter’s deep gravitational potential. In this talk, I will introduce the dynamical behaviour of such a trapped and densely packed system of black holes; in particular, how it acts as an “engine” for generating binary black holes capable of merging via in-spiral and the associated gravitational-wave radiation, that can be detected by the AdLIGO detector. In this context, I shall discuss the typicalities of binary black hole sources that can be detected by the present detector.

Category: Kolloquium