Gravitational Wave Sources at the Heart of Galaxies

Almost every galaxy host a supermassive black hole at its heart. Surrdning these supermassive black holes are dense environments of stars and stellar remnants. In this talk, I’ll present the investigation of the dynamical and stellar evolution at the center of galaxies. We consider the interactions of a binary with the supermassive black hole that resides at these places, as well as the complex interactions with neighboring objects in these dense places. We also include the post-main sequence evolution of the stars, tides, and general relativity. The binaries evolve to their compact object stage and emit gravitational waves as they merge. Thus, we find that the galactic nuclei are natural places to form gravitational wave sources, from black hole binaries mergers to neutron star black hole binaries.