8 papers
Pebbles to Gems: Intermediate-mass black holes in the first star clusters
Benedetta Mestichelli, Manuel Arca Sedda, Marta Volonteri +9
The rapid assembly of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) observed at requires efficient seeding mechanisms in the early Universe. Population III (Pop. III) star clusters…
Intermediate-mass black hole seeding in galactic nuclei from star cluster migration
Stefano Torniamenti, Nils Hoyer, Nadine Neumayer +2
Nuclear star clusters are one of the most favorable sites to host hierarchical black hole (BH) mergers, potentially bridging the gap from stellar-mass to massive BHs. However, thei…
Investigating the formation channel of GW231123: Population III stars or hierarchical mergers?
Federico Angeloni, Konstantinos Kritos, Raffaella Schneider +5
The gravitational wave event GW231123, with component black hole masses lying within or above the pair-instability mass gap, poses a significant challenge to current stellar evolut…
Milky Way Globular Clusters: Nurseries for Dynamically-Formed Binary Black Holes
Federico Angeloni, Konstantinos Kritos, Raffaella Schneider +4
We present a novel self-consistent theoretical framework to characterize the formation, evolution, and merger sites of dynamically-formed black hole binaries, with a focus on expla…
Optically thick winds of very massive stars suppress intermediate-mass black hole formation
Stefano Torniamenti, Michela Mapelli, Lumen Boco +3
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are the link between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes. Gravitational waves have started unveiling a population of IMBHs in the $\sim…
Metal-poor single Wolf-Rayet stars: The interplay of optically thick winds and rotation
Lumen Boco, Michela Mapelli, Andreas A. C. Sander +7
The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) hosts 12 known Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars, seven of which are apparently single. Their formation is a challenge for current stellar evolution models bec…