Related papers: Nutational resonances, transitional precession, an…
Binary black-hole systems are expected to be important sources of gravitational waves for upcoming gravitational-wave detectors. If the spins are not colinear with each other or with the orbital angular momentum, these systems exhibit…
Binary black holes with misaligned spins will generically induce both precession and nutation of the orbital angular momentum $\bf{L}$ about the total angular momentum $\bf{J}$. These phenomena modulate the phase and amplitude of the…
The dynamics of precessing binary black holes (BBHs) in the post-Newtonian regime has a strong timescale hierarchy: the orbital timescale is very short compared to the spin-precession timescale which, in turn, is much shorter than the…
We present new insights into the phenomenology of post-Newtonian spin precession in black-hole binaries. Using multi-timescale methods, previous work has shown that the precession and nutation dynamics in such systems can be classified into…
Within the framework of 2PN black-hole binary spin precession, we explore configurations where one of the two spins oscillates from being completely aligned with the orbital angular momentum to being completely anti-aligned with it during a…
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…
Binary-black-hole orbits precess when the black-hole spins are mis-aligned with the binary's orbital angular momentum. The apparently complicated dynamics can in most cases be described as simple precession of the orbital angular momentum…
We present analytical and numerical progress on black-hole binary spin precession at second post-Newtonian order using multi-timescale methods. In addition to the commonly used effective spin which acts as a constant of motion, we exploit…
We analyze in detail the spin precession equations in binary black hole systems, when the tidal torque on a Kerr black hole due to quadrupole-monopole coupling is taken into account. We show that completing the precession equations with…
Gravitational waves from coalescing binary black holes encode the evolution of their spins prior to merger. In the post-Newtonian regime and on the precession timescale, this evolution has one of three morphologies, with the spins either…
We construct an efficient frequency domain waveform for generic circular compact object binaries that include neutron stars. The orbital precession is solved on the radiation reaction timescale (and then transformed to the frequency…
We derive an effective potential for binary black-hole (BBH) spin precession at second post-Newtonian order. This effective potential allows us to solve the orbit-averaged spin-precession equations analytically for arbitrary mass ratios and…
Given the absence of observations of black hole binaries, it is critical that the full range of accessible parameter space be explored in anticipation of future observation with gravitational wave detectors. To this end, we compile the…
We evolve a set of 32 equal-mass black-hole binaries with collinear spins (with intrinsic spin magnitudes $|\vec{S}_{1,2}/m^2_{1,2}|=0.8$) to study the effects of precession in the highly nonlinear plunge and merger regimes. We compare the…
Gravitational waves from precessing black-hole binaries exhibit features that are absent in nonprecessing systems. The most prominent of these is a parity-violating asymmetry that beams energy and linear momentum preferentially along or…
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…
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…
Robustly measuring binary black hole spins via gravitational waves is key to understanding these systems' astrophysical origins, but remains challenging -- especially for high-mass systems, whose signals are short and dominated by the…
We present the numerical code PRECESSION: a new open-source python module to study the dynamics of precessing black-hole binaries in the post-Newtonian regime. The code provides a comprehensive toolbox to (i) study the evolution of the…
We compare waveforms and orbital dynamics from the first long-term, fully non-linear, numerical simulations of a generic black-hole binary configuration with post-Newtonian predictions. The binary has mass ratio q~0.8 with arbitrarily…