Seminar by Miguel Martinez, Northwestern
Hierarchical stellar triples are expected to exist in great numbers across a wide variety of astrophysical contexts. In dense stellar environments, triple systems are the natural outcome of binary-mediated interactions. In the Galactic field, it is now well established that the majority of massive stars are in triples or higher order configurations. In such systems, the inner binary can be driven to merge due to the influence of long-term secular perturbations from the tertiary companion, most notably by the eccentric Lidov-Kozai effect. In this talk I will present results from studies that examine triple mergers from both cluster and isolated environments. I will discuss the population properties of black hole mergers from these channels and how they might be distinguished from mergers from other channels. These results may help disentangle the the origins of events observed in GWTC-3 and future gravitational wave transient catalogs.
Host: Navin Sridhar