“Tracing the origin of Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in the gravitational-wave era”
In the last decade, gravitational-wave observations have provided crucial insights into the populations of binary compact objects, helping to address key open questions about their mass spectrum and formation history. They have also offered the first compelling evidence for the existence of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), with masses above 100 MSun.
In this talk, I will discuss several scenarios for the formation of IMBHs. I will explore the uncertainties in stellar and binary evolution, stellar winds, and pair-instability processes that still limit our understanding. I will explore how dynamical interactions in dense star clusters, such as globular clusters, can lead to IMBH formation via hierarchical mergers, and how these IMBHs may subsequently populate galactic nuclei via cluster migration. Finally, I will show how the comparison with gravitational-wave detections can provide valuable clues to their formation pathways.