The Intertwined Stories of Globular Clusters and Their Black Holes

Dense star clusters such as the globular clusters (GCs) are efficient factories for stellar exotica including detectable GW sources. I will describe the unique formation process of binary black holes (BBHs) inside typical GCs and its implications. I will further show how the fates of a GC and its black holes are intimately connected making the retention fraction of BHs in today's GCs very interesting. I will describe the challenges for observationally constraining the retention fraction of BHs in today's GCs and possible ways to overcome them. One common uncertainty in predicting the rate of GW detections comes from the lack of constraints on the distribution of natal kicks for BHs. I will describe how this uncertainty could be alleviated with the help of GAIA.