Martin Pessah receives a Semper Ardens Accomplish grant from the Carlsberg Foundation
One of the central open problems in gravitational-wave astrophysics is identifying the environments in which black hole binaries form, evolve, and eventually merge to produce the events we detect. This research program will develop a new framework that incorporates the role of turbulent gas dynamics in the evolution of black hole binaries. The project aims to advance our understanding of how black hole binaries evolve in dense astrophysical settings, leading to improved models for the precursors of gravitational-wave mergers. The research enabled by this Semper Ardens grant will provide a more complete picture of how black hole binaries in disks around supermassive black holes evolve in order to shed light on the astrophysical origins of gravitational-wave events.