English

Could black hole thermodynamics play a role in black hole mergers?

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2026-01-27 v2

Abstract

Gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers yield values for both the black hole remnant mass MM and it's spin aa, with the 169169 aa values collected so far crowding significantly around their average aˉ=0.6869±0.087\bar{a}=0.6869\pm 0.087. Could this crowding relate directly to the Davies phase transition point at a=0.68125a=0.68125 from black hole thermodynamics? I argue that a necessary challenge for such a connection requires a consistent application of the thermodynamic fluctuation theory that follows from black hole thermodynamics (BHT). Specifically, necessary are a correct choice of fluctuating variables, as well as thermal equilibrium between the event horizon at the Hawking temperature μK\sim \mu K and the outside universe 3K\sim 3 K. I show that the former requirement follows in straightforward fashion from the BHT of the Kerr model, while the later requires an accretion disk following the Novikov-Thorne accretion disk model. I construct a thermodynamic fluctuation theory meeting both these requirements. My results open the possibility that black hole mergers are based on some dynamical model (not known to me) with a limiting attractor state at the Davies point.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.04379,
  title  = {Could black hole thermodynamics play a role in black hole mergers?},
  author = {George Ruppeiner},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.04379},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

12 pages, 5 figures