We present results from several simulations of equal mass black holes with spin. The spin magnitudes are S/m2=0.8 in all cases, but we vary the spin orientations arbitrarily, in and outside the orbital plane. We find that in all but one case the final merged black hole acquires a kick of more than 1000 km/s, indicating that kicks of this magnitude are likely to be generic and should be expected for mergers with general spin orientations. The maximum kick velocity we find is 2500 km/s and occurs for initial spins which are anti-aligned in the initial orbital plane.
@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0703075,
title = {Binary black hole mergers: large kicks for generic spin orientations},
author = {Wolfgang Tichy and Pedro Marronetti},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0703075},
year = {2008}
}