Martin Pessah has been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant
“Black Hole Binary Mergers in Turbulent Magnetized Disks”
The project will investigate how black holes embedded in the gaseous disks around supermassive black holes can pair up, evolve, and eventually merge. These environments, found in active galactic nuclei, may play an important role in producing some of the black-hole mergers detected through gravitational waves.
The research program will develop new theoretical and computational models that combine turbulent magnetized accretion flows with radiation, thermodynamics, and relativistic effects. The goal is to make quantitative predictions for the population properties of black-hole mergers and for their possible gravitational-wave and electromagnetic signatures. The project will also strengthen international collaborations with Professor James Stone and researchers at the Institute for Advanced Study as well as at Princeton University.