Related papers: Flip-flopping binary black holes
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…
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…
Binary black-hole systems with spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum are of special interest, as studies indicate that this configuration is preferred in nature. If the spins of the two bodies differ, there can be a prominent…
Simulations of binary neutron stars have seen great advances in terms of physical detail and numerical quality. However, the spin of the neutron stars, one of the simplest global parameters of binaries, remains mostly unstudied. We present…
We present a straightforward approach for estimating the final black hole spin of a binary black hole coalescence with arbitrary initial masses and spins. Making some simple assumptions, we estimate the final angular momentum to be the sum…
Binary black hole simulations have traditionally been computationally very expensive: current simulations are performed in supercomputers involving dozens if not hundreds of processors, thus systematic studies of the parameter space of…
Spectacular breakthroughs in numerical relativity now make it possible to compute spacetime dynamics in almost complete generality, allowing us to model the coalescence and merger of binary black holes with essentially no approximations.…
During post-Newtonian evolution of a compact binary, a mass ratio different from 1 provides a second small parameter, which can lead to unexpected results. We present a statistics of supermassive black hole candidates, which enables us…
While supermassive binary black holes inspiral toward merger they may also experience significant accretion of matter from a surrounding disk. We study the dynamics of this system, simultaneously describing the evolving spacetime and…
Recent studies of accretion onto supermassive black hole binaries suggest that much, perhaps most, of the matter eventually accretes onto one hole or the other. If so, then for binaries whose inspiral from ~1 pc to 0.001 - 0.01 pc is driven…
We analyze the inspiral dynamics of equal-mass precessing black-hole binaries using multi-timescale techniques. The orbit-averaged post-Newtonian evolutionary equations admit two constants of motion in the equal-mass limit, namely the…
Binary black hole spin measurements from gravitational wave observations can reveal the binary's evolutionary history. In particular, the spin orientations of the component black holes within the orbital plane, $\phi_1$ and $\phi_2$, can be…
The prediction of the spin of the black hole resulting from the merger of a generic black-hole binary system is of great importance to study the cosmological evolution of supermassive black holes. Several attempts have been recently made to…
We present a new numerical code developed for the evolution of binary black-hole spacetimes using different initial data and evolution techniques. The code is demonstrated to produce state-of-the-art simulations of orbiting and inspiralling…
We perform a systematic study of eccentric orbiting nonspinning black hole binaries. We first make a technical study of the optimal full numerical techniques to apply to these studies. We choose different gauge parameters and Courant…
We perform a sequence of binary black hole simulations with increasingly small mass ratios, reaching to a 128:1 binary that displays 13 orbits before merger. Based on a detailed convergence study of the $q=m_1/m_2=1/15$ nonspinning case, we…
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…
Two important parameters inferred from the gravitational wave signals of binaries of precessing black holes are the spin tilt angles, i.e., the angles at which the black holes' spin axes are inclined with respect to the binary's orbital…
Although the orbits of comparable mass, spinning black holes seem to defy simple decoding, we find a means to decipher all such orbits. The dynamics is complicated by extreme perihelion precession compounded by spin-induced precession. We…
Binary systems of black holes emit gravitational waves as they move through their orbits. While most of the emitted radiation escapes to future null infinity, a small fraction is absorbed by the black holes themselves. This is known as…