Linking the fate of massive black hole binaries to the active galactic nuclei luminosity function

Understand

Massive black hole binaries are naturally predicted in the context of the hierarchical model of structure formation.

• The binaries that manage to lose most of their angular momentum can coalesce to form a single remnant.
• In the last stages of this process, the holes undergo an extremely loud phase of gravitational wave emission, possibly detectable by current and future probes.
• The theoretical effort towards obtaining a coherent physical picture of the binary path down to coalescence is still underway.