Speaker
Description
The typical binaries of massive black holes that the LISA gravitational wave detector will observe
are in the range 10^4-10^6 solar masses. In the low redshift Universe, observations of active
galactic nuclei and other types of sources suggest that such black holes preferentially reside
in dwarf galaxies. Dwarf galaxies are notoriously dark matter dominated down to their cores. I will
show how the process of pairing and binary formation of massive black holes inside dwarf galaxies
is heavily affected by the dark matter density profile. This, in turn, carries information on the nature
of dark matter, with the caveat that baryonic physics effects might also play a role in shaping the
evolution of dwarf galaxies' dark matter profiles. In particular, successful formation of a binary of massive black holes seems to be disfavoured in cored dark matter profiles, which are predicted in
some dark matter models alternative to Cold Dark Matter. The rate of LISA sources as a function
of redshift might thus carry precious information on the nature of the host dark matter halos.
I will conclude with a digression on another important aspect, also relevant to GW astronomy,
namely how dark matter might have influenced, directly or indirectly, the formation of the seeds
of massive black holes at high redshift.
