Related papers: High-spin binary black hole mergers
Astrophysically realistic black holes may have spins that are nearly extremal (i.e., close to 1 in dimensionless units). Numerical simulations of binary black holes are important tools both for calibrating analytical templates for…
High-accuracy binary black hole simulations are presented for black holes with spins anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum. The particular case studied represents an equal-mass binary with spins of equal magnitude S/m^2=0.43757 \pm…
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…
We present the results of 61 new simulations of nonprecessing spinning black hole binaries with mass ratios $q=m_1/m_2$ in the range $1/3\leq q\leq1$ and individual spins covering the parameter space $-0.85\leq\alpha_{1,2}\leq0.85$. We…
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…
The spin of the final black hole in the coalescence of nonspinning black holes is determined by the ``residual'' orbital angular momentum of the binary. This residual momentum consists of the orbital angular momentum that the binary is not…
We present results on the mass and spin of the final black hole from mergers of equal mass, spinning black holes. The study extends over a broad range of initial orbital configurations, from direct plunges to quasi-circular inspirals to…
Black holes of mass M must have a spin angular momentum S below the Kerr limit chi = S/M^2 < 1, but whether astrophysical black holes can attain this limiting spin depends on their accretion history. Gas accretion from a thin disk limits…
We present results from several simulations of equal mass black holes with spin. The spin magnitudes are $S/m^2=0.8$ in all cases, but we vary the spin orientations arbitrarily, in and outside the orbital plane. We find that in all but one…
Binary black-hole systems with spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum are of special interest as they may be the preferred end-state of the inspiral of generic supermassive binary black-hole systems. In view of this, we have…
We evolve a binary black hole system bearing a mass ratio of $q=m_1/m_2=2/3$ and individual spins of $S^z_1/m_1^2=0.95$ and $S^z_2/m_2^2=-0.95$ in a configuration where the large black hole has its spin antialigned with the orbital angular…
Astrophysical black holes could be nearly extremal (that is, rotating nearly as fast as possible); therefore, nearly extremal black holes could be among the binaries that current and future gravitational-wave observatories will detect.…
We present the results of 14 simulations of nonspinning black hole binaries with mass ratios $q=m_1/m_2$ in the range $1/100\leq q\leq1$. For each of these simulations we perform three runs at increasing resolution to assess the finite…
We present the first fully-nonlinear numerical study of the dynamics of highly spinning black-hole binaries. We evolve binaries from quasicircular orbits (as inferred from Post-Newtonian theory), and find that the last stages of the orbital…
Motivated by the possibility of observing gravitational waves from merging black holes whose spins are nearly extremal (i.e., 1 in dimensionless units), we present numerical waveforms from simulations of merging black holes with the highest…
We evolve equal-mass, equal-spin black-hole binaries with specific spins of a/mH 0.925, the highest spins simulated thus far and nearly the largest possible for Bowen-York black holes, in a set of configurations with the spins…
Gravitational waves carry away both energy and angular momentum as binary black holes inspiral and merge. The relative efficiency with which they are radiated determines whether the final black hole of mass $M_f$ and spin $S_f$ saturates…
We report the first results from evolutions of a generic black-hole binary, i.e. a binary containing unequal mass black holes with misaligned spins. Our configuration, which has a mass ratio of 2:1, consists of an initially non-spinning…
We study the statistical distributions of the spins of generic black-hole binaries during the inspiral and merger, as well as the distributions of the remnant mass, spin, and recoil velocity. For the inspiral regime, we start with a random…
We present the first numerical simulations of an initially non-spinning black-hole binary with mass ratio as large as 10:1 in full general relativity. The binary completes approximately 3 orbits prior to merger and radiates about 0.415% of…