Related papers: Black hole binary inspiral and trajectory dominanc…
Gravitational waves from merging binary black holes present exciting opportunities for understanding fundamental aspects of gravity, including nonlinearities in the strong-field regime. One challenge in studying and interpreting the…
We study the correlation between a part of the gravitational field at the common dynamical horizon in the strong field regime and the news of the gravitational radiation received from the system in the weak field regime, in the post-merger…
In this work, we uncover new features in the evolution of the deformations of the dynamical horizon geometry in a binary black hole merger scenario using numerical relativity. First, in the inspiral phase, owing to the deformations, the…
Under the dissipative effects of gravitational radiation, black hole binaries will transition from an inspiral to a plunge. The separatrix between bound and plunging orbits features prominently in the transition. For equatorial Kerr orbits,…
With hydrodynamical simulations we examine the evolution of a highly misaligned circumbinary disc around a black hole binary including the effects of general relativity. We show that a disc mass of just a few percent of the binary mass can…
The spin precession of binary black holes (BBHs) that originate from isolated high-mass binary stars is determined by the interplay of phenomena such as tides, winds, accretion, common-envelope evolution, natal kicks, and stellar…
A stationary magnetic dipole immersed in an electric field carries "hidden" mechanical momentum. However, the fate of this momentum if the fields are turned off is unclear. We consider a charge-and-dipole hidden momentum configuration, and…
When two black holes merge, the asymmetric emission of gravitational waves provides an impulse to the merged system; this gravitational wave recoil velocity can be up to 4000 km s$^{-1}$, easily fast enough for the black hole to escape its…
The possible formation mechanisms of massive close binary black holes (BHs) that can merge in the Hubble time to produce powerful gravitational wave bursts detected during advanced LIGO O1 and O2 science runs include the evolution from…
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…
An inspiralling object of mass $\mu$ around a Kerr black hole of mass $M (\gg \mu)$ experiences a continuous transition near the innermost stable circular orbit from adiabatic inspiral to plunge into the horizon as gravitational radiation…
We have used our new technique for fully numerical evolutions of orbiting black-hole binaries without excision to model the last orbit and merger of an equal-mass black-hole system. We track the trajectories of the individual apparent…
We establish the set of independent variables suitable to monitor the complicated evolution of the spinning compact binary during the inspiral. Our approach is valid up to the second post-Newtonian order, including leading order spin-orbit,…
Binary black holes occupy a special place in our quest for understanding the evolution of galaxies along cosmic history. If massive black holes grow at the center of (pre-)galactic structures that experience a sequence of merger episodes,…
Numerical relativity has recently yielded a plethora of results about kicks from spinning mergers which has, in turn, vastly increased our knowledge about the spin interactions of black hole systems. In this work we use black hole…
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…
Binary supermassive black holes are produced by galactic mergers as the black holes from the two galaxies fall to the center of the merged system and form a bound pair. The two black holes will eventually coalesce in an enormous burst of…
Recent gravitational wave (GW) observations have enabled us to look beyond the standard paradigm of gravitational physics, namely general relativity (GR). Along with the mass and the angular momentum, which typical astrophysical black holes…
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…
Gravitational radiation arising from the inspiral and merger of binary black holes (BBH's) is a promising candidate for detection by kilometer-scale interferometric gravitational wave observatories. This paper discusses a serious obstacle…