Related papers: Statistical constraints on binary black hole inspi…
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…
Attempts to understand the formation of binary black hole (BBH) systems detected via gravitational wave (GW) emission are affected by many unknowns and uncertainties, from both the observational and theoretical (astrophysical modelling)…
We discuss a new N-body simulation method for studying black hole binary dynamics. This method avoids previous numerical problems due to large mass ratios and trapped orbits with short periods. A treatment of relativistic effects is…
The major source of ground-based gravitational wave detectors, the inspiral and merger of comparable mass binary black holes (BBH), consists of a slow quasicircular inspiral, a merger to form a single remnant hole, and the quasinormal…
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…
Spin precession occurs in binary black holes whose spins are misaligned with the orbital angular momentum. Otherwise, the spin configuration is constant and the subsequent binary dynamics and gravitational-wave emission are much simpler. We…
We present a new approach to the problem of binary black holes in the pre-coalescence stage, i.e. when the notion of orbit has still some meaning. Contrary to previous numerical treatments which are based on the initial value formulation of…
We investigate the detectability of sub-dominant spin effects in merging black-hole binaries using current gravitational-wave data. Using a phenomenological model that separates the spin dynamics into precession (azimuthal motion) and…
We discuss a cornucopia of potential astrophysical signatures and constraints on magnetically charged black holes of various masses. As recently highlighted, being potentially viable astrophysical candidates with immense electromagnetic…
In a recent paper arXiv:0709.0299, we introduced a spin expansion that provides a simple yet powerful way to understand aspects of binary black hole (BBH) merger. This approach relies on the symmetry properties of initial and final…
We present results from a new code for binary black hole evolutions using the moving-puncture approach, implementing finite differences in generalised coordinates, and allowing the spacetime to be covered with multiple communicating…
We present simple procedures to construct quasi-circular initial data for numerical evolutions of binary black hole spacetimes. Our method consists of using Post-Newtonian theory in three ways: first to provide an initial guess for the…
Binary black holes may form both through isolated binary evolution and through dynamical interactions in dense stellar environments. The formation channel leaves an imprint on the alignment between the black hole spins and the orbital…
In numerical evolutions of binary black holes (BBH) it is desirable to easily control the orbital eccentricity of the BBH, and the number of orbits completed by the binary through merger. This paper presents fitting formulae that allow to…
We describe early success in the evolution of binary black hole spacetimes with a numerical code based on a generalization of harmonic coordinates. Indications are that with sufficient resolution this scheme is capable of evolving binary…
We produce the first numerical relativity binary black hole gravitational waveforms in a higher-curvature theory beyond general relativity. In particular, we study head-on collisions of binary black holes in order-reduced dynamical…
We present a new set of 95 numerical relativity simulations of non-precessing binary black holes (BBHs). The simulations sample comprehensively both black-hole spins up to spin magnitude of 0.9, and cover mass ratios 1 to 3. The simulations…
We establish the evolution equations of the set of independent variables characterizing the 2PN rigorous conservative dynamics of a spinning compact binary, with the inclusion of the leading order spin-orbit, spin-spin and mass quadrupole -…
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…
We study the parameter estimation of gravitational waves for aligned-spin binary black hole (BBH) signals and assess the impact of bias that can be produced by using nonspinning template waveforms. We employ simple methods to calculate the…