Related papers: Improved methods for simulating nearly extremal bi…
There is a significant possibility that astrophysical black holes with nearly-extremal spins exist. Numerical simulations of such systems require suitable initial data. In this paper, we examine three methods of constructing…
Largely motivated by the development of highly sensitive gravitational-wave detectors, our understanding of merging compact binaries and the gravitational waves they generate has improved dramatically in recent years. Breakthroughs in…
The localization of stellar-mass binary black hole mergers using gravitational waves is critical in understanding the properties of the binaries' host galaxies, observing possible electromagnetic emission from the mergers, or using them as…
There is a high level of interest in black hole-neutron star binaries, not only because their mergers may be detected by gravitational wave observatories in the coming years, but also because of the possibility that they could explain a…
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…
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…
Measurements of black-hole spins from gravitational-wave observations of black-hole binaries with ground-based detectors are expected to be hampered by partial degeneracies in the gravitational-wave phasing: between the two component spins,…
We compute the gravitational radiation generated in the evolution of a family of close binary black hole configurations, using a combination of numerical and perturbative approximation methods. We evolve the binaries with spins, $s$,…
Simultaneous gravitational and electromagnetic wave observations of merging black hole binaries (BHBHs) can provide unique opportunities to study gravitation physics, accretion and cosmology. Here we perform fully general relativistic,…
We study the dynamical evolution of supermassive black holes, in the late stage of galaxy mergers, from kpc to pc scales. In particular, we capture the formation of the binary, a necessary step before the final coalescence, and trace back…
We present numerical simulations of binary black hole systems which for the first time last for about one orbital period for close but still separate black holes as indicated by the absence of a common apparent horizon. An important part of…
Understanding the predictions of general relativity for the dynamical interactions of two black holes has been a long-standing unsolved problem in theoretical physics. Black-hole mergers are monumental astrophysical events, releasing…
The spectroscopic study of black hole quasinormal modes in gravitational-wave ringdown observations is hindered by our ignorance of which modes should dominate astrophysical signals for different binary configurations, limiting tests of…
Advances in the field of numerical relativity now make it possible to calculate the final, most powerful merger phase of binary black-hole coalescence for generic binaries. The state of the art has advanced well beyond the equal-mass case…
The spin distribution of binary black hole mergers contains key information concerning the formation channels of these objects, and the astrophysical environments where they form, evolve and coalesce. To quantify the suitability of deep…
Recent studies have shown the surprising effectiveness of the small mass-ratio approximation (SMR) in modeling the relativistic two-body problem even at comparable masses. Up to now this effectiveness has been demonstrated only during…
Orbital eccentricity and spin precession are precious observables to infer the formation history of binary black holes with gravitational-wave data. We present a post-Newtonian, multi-timescale analysis of the binary dynamics able to…
A gravitational wave (GW) signal carries imprints of the properties of its source. The ability to extract source properties crucially depends on our prior knowledge of the signal morphology. Even though binary black hole (BBH) mergers are…
We demonstrate that numerical relativity codes based on the moving punctures formalism are capable of evolving nearly maximally spinning black hole binaries. We compare a new evolution of an equal-mass, aligned-spin binary with…
Coalescing supermassive black hole binaries (BHBs) are expected to be the loudest sources of gravitational waves (GWs) in the Universe. Detection rates for ground or space-based detectors based on cosmological simulations and semi-analytic…