Pulsars, transients and relativistic astrophysics

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MKT J170456.2-482100: the first transient discovered by MeerKAT

(2019)

Authors:

LN Driessen, I McDonald, DAH Buckley, M Caleb, EJ Kotze, SB Potter, KM Rajwade, A Rowlinson, BW Stappers, E Tremou, PA Woudt, RP Fender, R Armstrong, P Groot, I Heywood, A Horesh, AJ van der Horst, E Koerding, VA McBride, JCA Miller-Jones, KP Mooley, RAMJ Wijers
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Physical constraints from near-infrared fast photometry of the black-hole transient GX 339-4

(2019)

Authors:

FM Vincentelli, P Casella, P Petrucci, T Maccarone, D Russell, P Uttley, B De Marco, R Fender, P Gandhi, J Malzac, K O'Brien, J Tomsick
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Spectrophotometric templates for core-collapse supernovae and their application in simulations of time-domain surveys

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 489:4 (2019) 5802-5821

Authors:

M Vincenzi, M Sullivan, RE Firth, CP Gutiérrez, C Frohmaier, M Smith, C Angus, RC Nichol
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GBTrans: a commensal search for radio pulses with the Green Bank 20-m telescope

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Oxford University Press (OUP) 489:3 (2019) 4001-4006

Authors:

Golnoosh Golpayegani, Duncan R Lorimer, Steven W Ellingson, Devansh Agarwal, Olivia Young, Frank Ghigo, Richard Prestage, Kaustubh Rajwade, Maura A McLaughlin, Michael Mingyar
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Hierarchical Black Hole Mergers in Active Galactic Nuclei.

Physical review letters American Physical Society (APS) 123:18 (2019) ARTN 181101

Authors:

Y Yang, I Bartos, V Gayathri, Kes Ford, Z Haiman, S Klimenko, B Kocsis, S Márka, Z Márka, B McKernan, R O'Shaughnessy

Abstract:

The origins of the stellar-mass black hole mergers discovered by LIGO/Virgo are still unknown. Here we show that if migration traps develop in the accretion disks of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and promote the mergers of their captive black holes, the majority of black holes within disks will undergo hierarchical mergers-with one of the black holes being the remnant of a previous merger. 40% of AGN-assisted mergers detected by LIGO/Virgo will include a black hole with mass ≳50M_{⊙}, the mass limit from stellar core collapse. Hierarchical mergers at traps in AGNs will exhibit black hole spins (anti)aligned with the binary's orbital axis, a distinct property from other hierarchical channels. Our results suggest, although not definitively (with odds ratio of ∼1), that LIGO's heaviest merger so far, GW170729, could have originated from this channel.
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