Black Hole in Globular Clusters
2019-11-29
12:15
CSIC
SalaAlberto Lobo (ICE building, UAB Campus)
Globular clusters (GCs) are the outcome of the earliest phases of star and galaxy formation in the Universe. Their high densities foster the formation and hardening of binary black holes (BHs) that can merge via gravitational wave in-spiral.
The contribution of this `dynamical channel' to gravitational wave detections – relative to other channels – is not understood, because it sensitively depends on the poorly constrained BH natal kicks and the unknown properties of infant GCs. I will present results of efforts to infer the BH content of Milky Way GCs by comparing dynamical mass models to kinematics and star counts. We find the signal of a BH population in several Milky Way GCs and I will discuss the implications of these findings for the BH merger rate across cosmic time.