Merging stellar-mass binary black holes

Ilya Mandel; Alison Farmer

doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2022.01.003

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arXiv · 1806.05820

Merging stellar-mass binary black holes

Ilya Mandel·Alison Farmer

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Abstract

The LIGO and Virgo detectors have directly observed gravitational waves from mergers of pairs of stellar-mass black holes, along with a smaller number of mergers involving neutron stars. These observations raise the hope that compact object mergers could be used as a probe of stellar and binary evolution, and perhaps of stellar dynamics. This colloquium-style article summarises the existing observations, describes theoretical predictions for formation channels of merging stellar-mass black-hole binaries along with their rates and observable properties, and presents some prospects for gravitational-wave astronomy.

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Ilya Mandel, Alison Farmer. 2018-06-15. Merging stellar-mass binary black holes. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physrep.2022.01.003

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