Relativistic Mergers of Supermassive Black Holes and their Electromagnetic Signatures

Understand

Coincident detections of electromagnetic (EM) and gravitational wave (GW) signatures from coalescence events of supermassive black holes are the next observational grand challenge.

• Such detections will provide the means to study cosmological evolution and accretion processes associated with these gargantuan compact objects.
• More generally, the observations will enable testing general relativity in the strong, nonlinear regime and will provide independent cosmological measurements to high precision.
• Understanding the conditions under which coincidences of EM and GW signatures arise during supermassive black hole mergers is therefore of paramount importance.