Related papers: Estimating the final spin of a binary black hole c…
Modeling the late inspiral and merger of supermassive black holes is central to understanding accretion processes and the conditions under which electromagnetic emission accompanies gravitational waves. We use fully general relativistic,…
A Kerr black hole with mass $M$ and angular momentum $J$ satisfies the extremality inequality $|J| \le M^2$. In the presence of matter and/or gravitational radiation, this bound needs to be reformulated in terms of local measurements of the…
In the standard paradigm, astrophysical black holes can be described solely by their mass and angular momentum - commonly referred to as `spin' - resulting from the process of their birth and subsequent growth via accretion. Whilst the mass…
Primordial black holes in the mass range of ground-based gravitational-wave detectors can comprise a significant fraction of the dark matter. Mass and spin measurements from coalescences can be used to distinguish between an astrophysical…
We study the gravitational collapse and formation of the Kerr black hole from the rotating progenitor star. We follow the evolution of black hole spin, coupled with its increasing mass. We study the effect of different level of rotation…
Compact binary coalescences are the most promising sources of gravitational waves (GWs) for ground based detectors. Binary systems containing one or two spinning black holes are particularly interesting due to spin-orbit (and eventual…
Cygnus X-1 is a well-studied persistent black hole X-ray binary. Recently, the three parameters needed to estimate the black hole spin of this system, namely the black hole mass $M$, the orbital inclination $i$ and the source distance $D$,…
The properties of precessing, coalescing binary black holes are presently inferred through comparison with two approximate models of compact binary coalescence. In this work we show these two models often disagree substantially when…
In this work, we elaborate on the development of a general relativistic formalism that allows one to analytically express the mass and spin parameters of the Kerr black hole in terms of observational data: the total redshift and blueshift…
In this paper, we continue our study of the motion of spinning test bodies orbiting Kerr black holes. Non-spinning test bodies follow geodesics of the spacetime in which they move. A test body's spin couples to the curvature of that…
Numerical-relativity simulations indicate that the black hole produced in a binary merger can recoil with a velocity up to v_max ~ 4,000 km/s with respect to the center of mass of the initial binary. This challenges the paradigm that most…
General relativity (GR) predicts the existence of black hole (BH). The rotating BH called as a Kerr Black hole and GR implies that there is an upper limit on the angular momentum per mass squared of black holes $\leq 1$, above which the…
The merger of two neutron stars will in general lead to the formation of a torus surrounding a black hole whose rotational energy can be tapped to potentially power a short gamma-ray burst. We have studied the merger of equal-mass binaries…
We compute the effect of an orbiting gas disc in promoting the coalescence of a central supermassive black hole binary. Unlike earlier studies, we consider a finite mass of gas with explicit time dependence: we do not assume that the gas…
Binary black hole systems in the pre-coalescence stage are numerically constructed by demanding that the associated spacetime admits a helical Killing vector. Comparison with third order post-Newtonian calculations indicates a rather good…
We present the first exact and analytical solution in General Relativity describing an equilibrium configuration for two stationary black holes. The metric models two collinear extremal Kerr black holes immersed in an external and…
We study the collision of two highly boosted equal mass, nonrotating black holes with generic impact parameter. We find such systems to exhibit zoom-whirl behavior when fine tuning the impact parameter. Near the threshold of immediate…
Understanding the fate of merging supermassive black holes in galactic mergers, and the gravitational wave emission from this process, are important LISA science goals. To this end, we present results from numerical relativity simulations…
The heaviest black holes discovered through gravitational waves have masses that are difficult to explain with current standard stellar models. This discrepancy may be due to a series of hierarchical mergers, where the observed black holes…
In this article we discuss a possible way of testing the Kerr black hole hypothesis by taking advantage of phenomena correlated with chaotic motion in the final stages of an accretion disk around a bumpy black hole. We anticipate that these…