Luzian Rhys Seeburger     (Austria)

seeburger @ mpia.de

Hunting for dormant black holes in the Milky Way galaxy

According to population models, we expect of order 10^7 stellar mass black holes to exist in the Milky Way - however, to this day, not a single one has been securely identified. This work aims to search for stellar mass, dormant black holes in close, detached binaries, using  a variety of possible signatures. These include, but are not limited to, ellipsoidal variation and doppler beaning of the light curve of the stellar companion, red- and blueshift variations in the star's spectrum, and light-centroid wobble of the companion’s position on the night sky. To this end, photometric, spectroscopic and astrometric data will be used. This will allow us to characterise stellar mass black holes in binaries, or, if none are found, place constraints on their populations

Supervisor:    Hans-Walter Rix   (MPIA)