Roger Blandford

Stanford University, September 29, 12:00 pm

Black Hole Clusters and Gravitational Waves

A speculative scheme is sketched that accounts for the genesis of massive black holes in galactic nuclei and the emission of gravitational waves with frequencies from nHz to kHz. Specifically, it is suggested that massive star clusters form early in the nuclei of galaxies and quickly develop rotating cores of ~ 10-100 solar mass black holes which evolve through radiative capture, hierarchical merging and the development of non-axisymmetric instability leading to the emission of low frequency coherent as well high frequency incoherent gravitational waves. The end result will be a single massive black hole that is activated by accreting gas.