Related papers: Exploring black hole superkicks
Over the last few years enormous progress has been made in the numerical description of the inspiral and merger of binary black holes. A particular effort has gone into the modelling of the physical properties of the final black hole,…
We study the superradiant scattering of gravitational waves by a nearly extremal black hole (dimensionless spin $a=0.99$) by numerically solving the full Einstein field equations, thus including backreaction effects. This allows us to study…
We analyze galactic black hole mergers and their emitted gravitational waves. Such mergers have typically unequal masses with mass ratio of the order 1/10. The emitted gravitational waves carry the inprint of spins and mass quadrupoles of…
We consider black holes resulting from binary black hole mergers. By fitting to numerical results we construct analytic formulas that predict the mass and spin of the final black hole. Our formulas are valid for arbitrary initial spins and…
Building up on previous work, we present a new calculation of the gravitational wave (GW) emission generated during the transition from quasi-circular inspiral to plunge, merger and ringdown by a binary system of nonspinning black holes, of…
We present preliminary results from self-consistent, high resolution direct {\it N}-body simulations of massive black hole binaries in mergers of galactic nuclei. The dynamics of the black hole binary includes the full Post-Newtonian…
In this work we study the dynamics of spinning binary black hole systems in the strong field regime. For this purpose we extract from numerical relativity simulations the binding energy, specific orbital angular momentum, and…
Supermassive black hole binaries are likely to accrete interstellar gas through a circumbinary disk. Shortly before merger, the inner portions of this circumbinary disk are subject to general relativistic effects. To study this regime, we…
Measurements of black-hole spins are of crucial importance to fulfill the promise of gravitational-wave astronomy. On the astrophysics side, spins are perhaps the cleanest indicator of black-hole evolutionary processes, thus providing a…
When binary black holes merge in dense star clusters, their remnants can pair up with other black holes in the cluster, forming heavier and heavier black holes in a process called hierarchical merger. The most important condition for…
In this Letter we revisit arguments suggesting that the Bardeen-Petterson effect can coalign the spins of a central supermassive black hole binary accreting from a circumbinary (or circumnuclear) gas disc. We improve on previous estimates…
We perform a parameter study of non-spinning, equal and unequal mass black hole binaries on generic, eccentric orbits in numerical relativity. The linear momentum considered ranges from that of a circular orbit to ten times that value. We…
We compute the emission of linear momentum (kicks) by both gravitational and electromagnetic radiation in fully general-relativistic numerical evolutions of quasi-circular charged black hole binaries. We derive analytical expressions for…
The inferred parameters of the binary black hole GW151226 are consistent with nonzero spin for the most massive black hole, misaligned from the binary's orbital angular momentum. If the black holes formed through isolated binary evolution…
There is a high level of interest in black hole-neutron star binaries, not only because their mergers may be detected by gravitational wave observatories in the coming years, but also because of the possibility that they could explain a…
Black hole-neutron star (BHNS) binaries are important sources of gravitational waves for second-generation interferometers, and BHNS mergers are also a proposed engine for short, hard gamma-ray bursts. The behavior of both the spacetime…
We describe recent numerical simulations of the merger of a class of equal mass, non-spinning, eccentric binary black hole systems in general relativity. We show that with appropriate fine-tuning of the initial conditions to a region of…
The behavior of merging black holes (including the emitted gravitational waves and the properties of the remnant) can currently be computed only by numerical simulations. This paper introduces ten numerical relativity simulations of binary…
A black hole binary approaching merger undergoes changes in its inspiral rate as energy and angular momentum are lost from the orbits into the horizons. This effect strengthens as the black holes come closer. We use numerical relativity…
Given the absence of observations of black hole binaries, it is critical that the full range of accessible parameter space be explored in anticipation of future observation with gravitational wave detectors. To this end, we compile the…