Kesden Group
The University of Texas at Dallas
Black Holes: Bridges between Relativity and Astrophysics
Image Credit: SXS, the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes (SXS) project (http://www.black-holes.org)
Black holes are regions of spacetime from which even light cannot escape. They are fundamental predictions of Einstein's theory of general relativity and have been observed in stellar binaries, through their gravitational influence on stars and gas at galactic centers, and through the gravitational waves they emit when they merge with one another. The Kesden Group is interested in how black holes form and interact with their astrophysical environments. Current theoretical research is focused on binary black-hole spin precession, how this precession affects the gravitational waves black holes emit near merger, and how these gravitational waves encode signatures of black-hole formation. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) recently discovered gravitational waves from two binary black-hole mergers and should observe dozens of events per year once it reaches design sensitivity later this decade.
The group is also interested in how relativity affects the tidal disruption of stars that wander too close to supermassive black holes at galactic centers. Dozens of candidate tidal-disruption events have been observed in the X-ray, UV, and optical and hundreds more may be seen by upcoming surveys by future observatories like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).