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Astrophysical black holes
This content has been downloaded from IOPscience. Please scroll down to see the full text. 2013 Class. Quantum Grav. 30 240301 (http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/30/24/240301) View the table of contents for this issue, or go to the journal homepage for more Download details: IP Address: 83.136.104.67 This content was downloaded on 31/01/2017 at 16:39 Please note that terms and conditions apply.
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IOP PUBLISHING
CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM GRAVITY
Class. Quantum Grav. 30 (2013) 240301 (1p)
doi:10.1088/0264-9381/30/24/240301
EDITORIAL
Astrophysical black holes Of all the legacies of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, none is more fascinating than black holes. While Einstein himself was famously reluctant to concede their existence, black holes are now seen as the almost inevitable end result of the evolution of massive stars. The discovery of the distant and luminous quasars in 1963 provided compelling evidence for black holes with masses much greater than a solar mass. Most recently, the establishment of tight scaling relations between black hole mass and galaxy properties has motivated the view that supermassive black holes are nearly universal components of galaxies. One implication is that binary supermassive black holes should be created during galaxy mergers; the ultimate coalescence of these massive binaries would be a source of gravitational waves, potentially observable using space-based gravitational interferometers. Stellar-mass binary black holes are also expected to form, and these objects comprise one of the main targets of the Earthbased generation of advanced interferometric detectors presently under construction. The gravitational waves produced by the inspiral and coalescence of these binaries are now well understood and their detection could provide the first indisputable evidence for the existence of black holes. For this focus issue of Classical and Quantum Gravity, 13 prominent researchers have been asked to summarize recent developments in the observational and theoretical understanding of black holes, both stellar mass and supermassive, as well as black holes in alternate theories of gravity. The context is astrophysical; that is: how black holes form in, and interact with, their stellar and galactic environments, and the observational consequences of that interaction. The articles that follow address the following topics: (1) Black hole demography (F Shankar) (2) Compact object formation in supernovae (C Fryer) (3) The Galactic Center supermassive black hole (H. Falcke & S Markoff) (4) Supermassive black hole spin (C Reynolds) (5) Loss cone theory (D Merritt) (6) Accretion onto supermassive black holes (A King & C Nixon) (7) Binary black hole coalscence (J Schnittman) (8) Massive black hole binaries in galaxy mergers (L Mayer) (9) Gravitational wave emission from binary supermassive black holes (A Sesana) (10) Black holes in Lorentz-violating gravity theories (E Barausse & T Sotiriou) D Merritt and L Rezzolla Guest Editors
