Colloquium – Christopher Tiede

Christopher Tiede, Niels Bohr International Academy

How to Feed a Super-Massive Black Hole Binary

Following recent evidence for a stochastic background of gravitational waves from pulsar timing experiments, a cornerstone of the upcoming decade in astrophysics will be the detection of low-frequency gravitational waves from individual mergers of the Universe’s biggest black holes. The most transformative insights for astrophysics, cosmology, and fundamental physics will come from systems detected simultaneously in electromagnetic and gravitational radiation. In order to both find these sources in regular light and parse their gravitational signals, it is critical that we understand how super-massive binaries interact with their environments—particularly, reservoirs of gas residing in galactic centers. I will discuss the fundamental underpinnings of accretion theory, how this picture is adapted to binary systems, the numerical techniques typically applied to its study, and the possibility that feeding super-massive binaries may appear more distinct from standard, single-black-hole systems than is typically assumed. I will also touch on the potential for searching for the most massive and nearby binaries in the hot, diffuse clouds of dormant galaxy cores, highlighting new opportunities for connecting electromagnetic observations with forthcoming gravitational wave detections.

Bio: Christopher Tiede received his PhD in Physics from New York University, where he became an expert in numerical gas dynamics and its application to accretion flows around astrophysical binaries. He subsequently held a post-doctoral fellowship at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen and won a Marie Curie Fellowship for his research on the dynamics and electromagnetic characteristics of accreting super-massive black hole binaries.

February 4, 2026 @ 1:00pm (CST) in Commons Center 237

Host: Steve Taylor