Résumé / Abstract Seminaire_IAP
« Black holes in the cosmic landscape: gravity and gravitational waves in action »

Monica Colpi
Dipt. Fisica, Sezione Astrof., Univ. Milano (Milan, Italie)

In Nature, black holes come into two flavours: the stellar black holes, ubiquitous and widespread in all the galaxies of the universe, and the massive black holes dwelling at the centre of galaxies and of yet unknown origin. A desert zone is present between the two populations where the seeds of the massive black holes may reside. Is the desert real or inhabited by black holes still elusive to observations? Is the desert inhabited by transition objects of stellar origin or is there a genetic divide? Opening the multi-frequency gravitational wave window will shed light into the process(es) leading to massive black hole formation and evolution from cosmic dawn to the present. A quantum leap in our knowledge of astrophysical black holes will come when LISA will join LIGO-Virgo and the forthcoming ground based experiments in the exploration of a universe expected to be full of binary black holes. We will briefly review on how massive black hole binaries form during galaxy assembly and what gravitational waves inform us about their nature.
vendredi 28 octobre 2016 - 11:00
Amphithéâtre Henri Mineur, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
Page web du séminaire / Seminar's webpage