School of Physics CRA Seminar: Prof. Barry McKernan, BMCC-City University of New York and American Museum of Natural History

From LCDM models of structure formation, massive black hole mergers must be extremely common in the history of the universe. Many should be merging in the local (z~0) universe. I discuss several methods of searching for massive black hole mergers at a range of separations in galactic nuclei and their prospects for success with near-future space telescopes. I discuss the possibility of intermediate mass black hole formation in accretion disks around supermassive black holes and I outline the prospects for a search for radial velocity shifts in the broad FeKa line as a means of searching for relatively wide massive black hole binaries.