Recent calculations of the recoil velocity in binary black hole mergers have found the kick velocity to be of the order of a few hundred km/s in the case of non-spinning binaries and about 500km/s in the case of spinning configurations, and have lead to predictions of a maximum kick of up to 1300km/s. We test these predictions and demonstrate that kick velocities of at least 2500km/s are possible for equal-mass binaries with anti-aligned spins in the orbital plane. Kicks of that magnitude are likely to have significant repercussions for models of black-hole formation, the population of intergalactic black holes and the structure of host galaxies.
@article{arxiv.gr-qc/0702052,
title = {Supermassive recoil velocities for binary black-hole mergers with antialigned spins},
author = {J. A. Gonzalez and M. D. Hannam and U. Sperhake and B. Brugmann and S. Husa},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/0702052},
year = {2008}
}
Comments
Final version, published by Phys. Rev. Lett.; title changed according to suggestion of PRL; note added after preparation of manuscript