ERC Advanced Grant · 2021
Hunting Dormant Black Holes in the Galaxy with SDSS-V
Stellar evolution models suggest that there ought to be ~10e7 stellar-mass black holes (BHs) in our Milky Way. However, we currently know only of ~20 BHs, and those are in binaries where accretion makes them shine in X-rays. Beyond that, no non-accreting ‘dormant’ BH has ever been robustly identified across the Galactic disk. Finding dormant BHs in binaries (dBHBs) is fundamental to learning when which BHs form, how massive stars die, and what the precursors of BH gravitational wave events are. Such BHs cause characteristic time variations in radial velocity (RV), flux, and light-centroid positioning of their luminous companion, providing an avenue for detection and study. Spectroscopic,…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.