The Physics department colloquia are usually on Friday afternoons at 3:30 pm in Lapham Hall Room 160. Coffee and cookies are served at 3:15 pm in the same room. Anyone is welcome.

The Dynamic Lives of Supermassive Black Holes in Merging Galaxies
Dr. Laura Blecha Director, JSI Prize Postdoc, Dept. of Astronomy – Univ. of Maryland (College Park)

The LIGO detections of gravitational waves (GWs) from black hole mergers mark the beginning of the era of GW astronomy. The coming years hold great promise for GW detections of black hole binaries across the mass scale, including signatures of supermassive black hole (SMBH) inspiral and merger. Pulsar timing experiments, in particular, could soon detect GW signals from SMBH binaries. I will review current theoretical predictions for these GW signatures, including recent results that utilize the Illustris cosmological hydrodynamic simulations to construct the most comprehensive SMBH binary inspiral models to date. Moreover, when two SMBHs merge, asymmetric GW emission imparts a “recoil kick” to the remnant. In some cases, this can eject the SMBH from its host nucleus and leave the galaxy without a central SMBH. Observations of “recoiling” SMBHs would provide another source of (indirect) evidence for SMBH mergers, and a few recoil candidates have been identified in recent years. I’ll describe new results from simulations that suggest promising prospects for uncovering a population of recoiling SMBHs in current and future wide-field surveys.