While a broad line of the Fe Kα emission is commonly found in the X-ray spectra of typical Seyfert galaxies, the situation is unclear in the case of Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s)—an extreme subset which are generally thought to harbor less massive black holes with higher accretion rates. We report results of our study of the assemble property of the Fe K line in NLS1s by stacking the X-ray spectra of a large sample of 51 NLS1s observed with XMM-Newton. We find in the stacked X-ray spectra a prominent, broad emission feature over 4–7 keV, which is characteristic of the broad Fe Kα line. Our results suggest that a relativistic broad Fe line may in fact be common in NLS1s. The line profile is used to study the average spin of the black holes in the sample. We find, for the first time, that their black holes are constrained to be likely spinning at averagely low or moderate rates as a population. The implications of the results are discussed in the context of the black hole growth in NLS1 galaxies.

The detection of intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) in globular clusters has been hotly debated, with different observational methods delivering different outcomes for the same object. In order to understand these discrepancies, we construct detailed mock integral field spectroscopy (IFU) observations of globular clusters, starting from realistic Monte Carlo cluster simulations. The output is a data cube of spectra in a given field-of-view that can be analyzed in the same manner as real observations and compared to other (resolved) kinematic measurement methods. We show that the main discrepancies arise because the luminosity-weighted IFU observations can be strongly biased by the presence of a few bright stars that introduce a scatter in velocity dispersion measurements of several km s−1. We show that this intrinsic scatter can prevent a sound assessment of the central kinematics, and therefore should be fully taken into account to correctly interpret the signature of an IMBH.

We present an analysis of the optical nuclear spectra from the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in a sample of giant low surface brightness (GLSB) galaxies. GLSB galaxies are extreme late type spirals that are large, isolated and poorly evolved compared to regular spiral galaxies. Earlier studies have indicated that their nuclei have relatively low mass black holes. Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), we selected a sample of 30 GLSB galaxies that showed broad Hα emission lines in their AGN spectra. In some galaxies such as UGC 6284, the broad component of Hα is more related to outflows rather than the black hole. One galaxy (UGC 6614) showed two broad components in Hα, one associated with the black hole and the other associated with an outflow event. We derived the nuclear black hole (BH) masses of 29 galaxies from their broad Hα parameters. We find that the nuclear BH masses lie in the range 105 – 107 M⊙. The bulge stellar velocity dispersion σe was determined from the underlying stellar spectra. We compared our results with the existing BH mass - velocity dispersion (MBH–σe) correlations and found that the majority of our sample lie in the low BH mass regime and below the MBH–σe correlation. The effects of galaxy orientation in the measurement of σe and the increase of σe due to the effects of bar are probable reasons for the observed offset for some galaxies, but in many galaxies the offset is real. A possible explanation for the MBH–σe offset could be lack of mergers and accretion events in the history of these galaxies which leads to a lack of BH-bulge co-evolution.

We use photometry in the F220W, F250W, F330W, F435W filters from the High Resolution Channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys and photometry in the F555W, F675W, and F814W filters from the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 aboard the Hubble Space Telescope to derive individual stellar reddenings and extinctions for member stars in the HD 97950 cluster in the giant H ii region NGC 3603. Within the standard deviation associated with E(λ−F555W)/E(F435W−F555W) in each filter, the cluster extinction curve at ultraviolet wavelengths tends to be greyer than the average Galactic extinction laws from Cardelli et al. (1989) and Fitzpatrick et al. (1999). It is closer to the extinction law derived by Calzetti et al. (2000) for starburst galaxies, where the 0.2175 μm bump is absent.

We discuss the interplay of gravity and radiation in a static, spherically symmetric spacetime. Because of the spacetime curvature, balance between radiation pressure from spherical star and effective force of gravity may be established in a particular distance from the star surface, on so-called Eddington capture sphere. This is in contrast with the Newtonian scenario, for which Eddington luminosity of the radiation assures gravity-radiation balance at any radius. We explore properties of this relativistic equilibrium and the dynamics of test particles under radiation influence in the strong gravity regime.

Dynamical interactions that take place between objects in dense stellar systems lead to frequent formation of exotic stellar objects, unusual binaries, and systems of higher multiplicity. They are most important for the formation of binaries with neutron stars and black holes, which are usually observationally revealed in mass-transferring binaries. Here we review the current understanding of compact object's retention, of the metallicity dependence on the formation of low-mass X-ray binaries with neutron stars, and how mass-transferring binaries with a black hole and a white dwarf can be formed. We discuss as well one old unsolved puzzle and two new puzzles posed by recent observations: what descendants do ultra-compact X-ray binaries produce, how are very compact triples formed, and how can black hole low-mass X-ray binaries acquire non-degenerate companions?

It is difficult to find or identifying the binary black holes in parsec scales, since the dual AGN may be merged quickly. It is required to explore more possibilities to identifying binary black holes in parsec scales, we give some discussions, especially with the VLBI methods.

The recent studies show that the formation and evolution process of the nearby galaxies are still unclear. By using the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) 3.6m telescope, the PanDAS shows complicated substructures (dwarf satellite galaxies, halo globular clusters, extended clusters, star streams, etc.) in the halo of M31 to ~150 kpc from the center of galaxy and M31-M33 interaction has been studied. In our work, we would like to investigate formation, evolution and interaction of M31 and M33, which are the nearest two spiral galaxies in Local Group. The star cluster systems of the two galaxies are good tracers to study the dynamics of the substructures and the interaction. Since 2010, the Xinglong 2.16m, Lijiang 2.4m and MMT 6.5m telescopes have been used for our spectroscopic observations. The radial velocities and Lick absorption-line indices can thus be measured with the spectroscopy and then ages, metallicities and masses of the star clusters can be fitted with the simple stellar population models. These parameters could be used as the input physical parameters for numerical simulations of M31-M33 interaction.

The circum-nuclear region in an active galaxy is often complex with presence of high excitation gas, collimated radio outflow, and star formation activities, besides the actively accreting supermassive black hole. The unique spatial resolving power of Chandra X-ray imaging spectroscopy enables more investigations to disentangle the active galactic nuclei and starburst activities. For galaxies in the throes of a violent merging event such as NGC6240, we were able to resolve the high temperature gas surrounding its binary active black holes and discovered a large scale soft X-ray halo.

I review the evolution of binary supermassive black holes and focus on the stellar-dynamical mechanisms that may help to overcome the final-parsec problem – the possible stalling of the binary at a separation much larger than is required for an efficient gravitational wave emission. Recent N-body simulations have suggested that a departure from spherical symmetry in the nucleus of the galaxy may keep the rate of interaction of stars with the binary at a high enough level so that the binary continues to shrink rather rapidly. However, a major problem of all these simulations is that they do not probe the regime where collisionless effects are dominant – in other words, the number of particles in the simulation is still not sufficient to reach the asymptotic behavior of the system. I present a novel Monte Carlo method for simulating both collisional and collisionless evolution of non-spherical stellar systems, and apply it for the problem of binary supermassive black hole evolution. I show that in triaxial galaxies the final-parsec problem is largely non-existent, while in the axisymmetric case it seems to still exist in the limit of purely collisionless regime relevant for real galaxies, but disappears in the N-body simulations where the feasible values of N are still too low to get rid of collisional effects.

In the solar neighborhood, where the typical relaxation timescale is larger than the cosmic age, at least 10% to 15% of Sun-like stars have planetary systems with Jupiter-mass planets. In contrast, dense star clusters, characterized by frequent close encounters, have been found to host very few planets. We carry out numerical simulations with different initial conditions to investigate the dynamical stability of planetary systems in star cluster environments.

Almost all galaxies along the Hubble sequence host a compact massive object (CMO) in their center. The CMO can be either a supermassive black hole (SMBH) or a very dense stellar cluster, also known as nuclear star cluster (NSC). Generally, heavier galaxies (mass ≳ 1011 M⊙) host a central SMBH while lighter show a central NSC. Intermediate mass hosts, instead, contain both a NSC and a SMBH. One possible formation mechanisms of a NSC relies on the dry-merger (migratory) scenario, in which globular clusters (GCs) decay toward the center of the host galaxy and merge. In this framework, the absence of NSCs in high-mass galaxies can be imputed to destruction of the infalling GCs by the intense tidal field of the central SMBH. In this work, we report preliminary results of N-body simulations performed using our high-resolution, direct, code HiGPUs, to investigate the effects of a central SMBH on a single GC orbiting around it. By varying either the mass of the SMBH and the mass of the host galaxy, we derived an upper limit to the mass of the central SMBH, and thus to the mass of the host, above which the formation of a NSC is suppressed.

We will discuss the evolution of star clusters with a large initial binary fraction, up to 95%. The initial binary population is chosen to follow the invariant orbital-parameter distributions suggested by Kroupa (1995). The Monte Carlo MOCCA simulations of star cluster evolution are compared to the observations of Milone et al. (2012) for photometric binaries. It is demonstrated that the observed dependence on cluster mass of both the binary fraction and the ratio of the binary fractions inside and outside of the half mass radius are well recovered by the MOCCA simulations. This is due to a rapid decrease in the initial binary fraction due to the strong density-dependent destruction of wide binaries described by Marks, Kroupa & Oh (2011). We also discuss a new scenario for the formation of intermediate mass black holes in dense star clusters. In this scenario, intermediate mass black holes are formed as a result of dynamical interactions of hard binaries containing a stellar mass black hole, with other stars and binaries. We will discuss the necessary conditions to initiate the process of intermediate mass black hole formation and the dependence of its mass accretion rate on the global cluster properties.

Nuclear stellar clusters (NSCs) are dense stellar systems known to exist at the center of most of the galaxies. Some of them host a central massive black hole (MBH). They are though to form through in-situ star formation following the infall of gas to the galactic center and/or because of the infall and merger of several stellar clusters. Here we explore the latter scenario by means of detailed self-consistent N-body simulations, proving that a NSC built by the infall and following merger of stellar clusters shows many of the observed features of the Milky Way NSC. We also explore the possibility that the infalling clusters host intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs). Once decayed to the center, the IMBHs act as massive-perturbers accelerating the relaxation of the NSC, filling the loss-cone and boosting the tidal disruption rate of stars up to a value larger than the observational estimates, therefore providing a cumulative constraint on the existence of IMBHs in NSCs. Studying how the properties of the infalling clusters map to the properties of the resulting NSC, we find that, in the IMBHs-free case, the infall mechanism is able to produce many different observational signatures in the form of age segregation.

Galactic white dwarf binaries will be an abundant source of gravitational waves in the mHz frequency band of space-based detectors such as eLISA. A few thousand to a few tens of thousands of these systems will be individually resolvable by eLISA, depending on the final detector configuration. The remaining tens of millions of close white dwarf binaries will create an unresolvable anisotropic foreground of gravitational waves that will be comparable to the instrument noise of eLISA at frequencies below about a mHz. Both the resolvable binaries and the foreground can be used to better understand this population. Careful choice of the initial orientation of eLISA can mitigate this foreground in searches for other sources.

We present a set of, large scale direct N-body simulations of the galaxy collision with the central Supermassive Black Hole Binary (SMBHB) system. Based on our simulations which include the accurate Post Newtonian (PN) relativistic dynamical corrections we can estimated the merging time for the real astrophysical object. Each galaxy initially was represented as a set of particles (up to N=500k) with Plummer distribution. The SMBHBs system is described using the two special high mass, i.e. “relativistic”, particles. The interaction between these two particles have an extra PN correction terms (up to 3.5PN). Merging time upper limit was obtained for the closely interacting galaxy system NGC 6240.

Nuclear stellar clusters (NSCs) are known to exist around massive black holes (MBHs) in galactic nuclei. Two formation scenarios were suggested for their origin: build-up of NSCs and Continuous in-situ star-formation. Here we study the effects of star formation on the build-up of NSCs and its implications for their long term evolution and their resulting structure. We show that continuous star-formation can lead to the build-up of an NSC with properties similar to those of the Milky-way NSC. We also find that the general structure of the old stellar population in the NSC with in-situ star-formation could be very similar to the steady-state Bahcall-Wolf cuspy structure. However, its younger stellar population does not yet achieve a steady state. In particular, formed/evolved NSCs with in-situ star-formation contain differential age-segregated stellar populations which are not yet fully mixed. Younger stellar populations formed in the outer regions of the NSC have a cuspy structure towards the NSC outskirts, while showing a core-like distribution inwards; with younger populations having larger core sizes.

We report on GalevNB (Galev for N-body simulations), an integrated software solution that provides N-body users direct access to the software package GALEV (GALaxy EVolutionary synthesis models). GalevNB is developed for the purpose of a direct comparison between N-body simulations and observations. It converts the fundamental stellar properties of N-body simulations, i.e., stellar mass, temperature, stellar luminosity and metallicity, into observational magnitudes for a variety of filters of widely used instruments/telescopes (HST, ESO, SDSS, 2MASS), and into spectra that span from far-UV (90 Å) to near-IR (160 μm).

The study of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) is a young and promising field of research. If IMBHs exist, they could explain the rapid growth of supermassive black holes by acting as seeds in the early stage of galaxy formation. Formed by runaway collisions of massive stars in young and dense stellar clusters, intermediate-mass black holes could still be present in the centers of globular clusters, today. Our group investigated the presence of intermediate-mass black holes for a sample of 10 Galactic globular clusters. We measured the inner kinematic profiles with integral-field spectroscopy and determined masses or upper limits of central black holes in each cluster. In combination with literature data we further studied the positions of our results on known black-hole scaling relations (such as M• − σ) and found a similar but flatter correlation for IMBHs. Applying cluster evolution codes, the change in the slope could be explained with the stellar mass loss occurring in clusters in a tidal field over its life time. Furthermore, we present results from several numerical simulations on the topic of IMBHs and integral field units (IFUs). We ran N-body simulations of globular clusters containing IMBHs in a tidal field and studied their effects on mass-loss rates and remnant fractions and showed that an IMBH in the center prevents core collapse and ejects massive objects more rapidly. These simulations were further used to simulate IFU data cubes. For the specific case of NGC 6388 we simulated two different IFU techniques and found that velocity dispersion measurements from individual velocities are strongly biased towards lower values due to blends of neighboring stars and background light. In addition, we use the Astrophysical Multipurpose Software Environment (AMUSE) to combine gravitational physics, stellar evolution and hydrodynamics to simulate the accretion of stellar winds onto a black hole.

We present the estimates of the black hole spins of five quasars. The peaks of the spectra of the accretion discs surrounding massive black holes in quasars are in the far-UV or soft X-ray band, which are usually not observed. However, in the disc corona model, the soft photons from the disc are Comptonized to high energy in the hot corona, and the hard X-ray spectra (luminosity and spectral shape) contain the information of the incident spectra from the disc. The values of black hole spin parameter a are inferred from the spectral fitting, which spread over a large range, ~ −0.94 to 0.998.