Speaker
Description
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), expected to occupy the mass range between stellar-mass and supermassive black holes (approximately 100-10000 solar masses), remain one of the least explored populations of compact objects. Dense star clusters are thought to play a central role in their formation, with stars and stellar-mass black holes acting as the primary building blocks. These environments produce binaries that can eventually be detected through gravitational-wave observations.
In this talk, I will explore the conditions under which IMBHs can form in star clusters through runaway stellar mergers and hierarchical binary black hole mergers. I will present results from a suite of simulations performed with the semi-analytic population synthesis code B-POP, focusing on the efficiency of IMBH formation and the production of intermediate mass-ratio inspirals.
I will also discuss the possible dynamical origin of the recent candidate event GW231123, reported by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration, which may represent the first evidence of a light IMBH binary merger.
Finally, I will highlight how these simulations improve our understanding of the dynamical contribution to the observed population of binary black hole mergers and help assess the prospects for detecting IMBHs with future third-generation gravitational-wave observatories such as the Einstein Telescope.