Related papers: The interior of a binary black hole merger
Merging binary black holes embedded in gaseous environments, such as supermassive black hole binaries following gas-rich galaxy mergers, are promising sources of multi-messenger transients in the upcoming age of space-based gravitational…
We report results from simulations in general relativity of magnetized disks accreting onto merging black hole binaries, starting from relaxed disk initial data. The simulations feature an effective, rapid radiative cooling scheme as a…
Astrophysical black holes could be nearly extremal (that is, rotating nearly as fast as possible); therefore, nearly extremal black holes could be among the binaries that current and future gravitational-wave observatories will detect.…
Evidence has been mounting for the existence of black holes with masses from 10^2 to 10^4 M_Solar associated with stellar clusters. Such intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) will encounter other black holes in the dense cores of these…
Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are believed to be the missing link between the supermassive black holes (BHs) found at the centers of massive galaxies and BHs formed through stellar core collapse. One of the proposed mechanisms for…
Methods are presented to define and compute source multipoles of dynamical horizons in numerical relativity codes, extending previous work from the isolated and dynamical horizon formalisms in a manner that allows for the consideration of…
Massive black holes appear to be present in the nuclei of almost all galaxies, but their genesis and evolution are not well understood. As astrophysical black holes are completely characterized by their masses and spins, the observed joint…
Gravitational waves from binary black hole pairs have emerged as an important observational tool in current times. The energy of the BH - BH binary pair is radiated in the form of gravitational waves and to compensate for that energy,…
It is expected that all astrophysical black holes in equilibrium are well described by the Kerr solution. Moreover, any black hole far away from equilibrium, such as one initially formed in a compact binary merger or by the collapse of a…
Mergers of gas-rich galaxies are key events in the hierarchical built-up of cosmic structures, and can lead to the formation of massive black hole binaries. By means of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations we consider the late stages…
Recent breakthroughs in the field of numerical relativity have led to dramatic progress in understanding the predictions of General Relativity for the dynamical interactions of two black holes in the regime of very strong gravitational…
Multiple approaches are required to study the evolution of black-hole binaries. While the post-Newtonian approximation is sufficient to describe the early inspiral (even from infinitely large orbital separation), only numerical relativity…
The recently developed MOTSodesic method for locating marginally outer trapped surfaces was effectively restricted to non-rotating spacetimes. In this paper we extend the method to (multi-)axisymmetric time slices of (multi-)axisymmetric…
As the number of gravitational wave observations has increased in recent years, the variety of sources has broadened. Here we investigate whether it is possible for the current generation of detectors to distinguish between very short-lived…
A generic black hole merger occurs through a restructuring of creases (sharp edges) on the event horizon. This process is studied for a black hole merger in the limit of infinite mass ratio, for which constructing the event horizon reduces…
Black-hole-binary coalescence is often divided into three stages: inspiral, merger and ringdown. The post-Newtonian (PN) approximation treats the inspiral phase, black-hole perturbation (BHP) theory describes the ringdown, and the nonlinear…
Recent gravitational wave observations include possible detections of black hole - neutron star binary mergers. As with binary black hole mergers, numerical simulations help characterize the sources. For binary systems with neutron star…
Merging supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries will likely be surrounded by a circumbinary accretion disk. Close to merger, gravitational radiation-driven inspiral will happen on timescales faster than the effective viscous time at the…
We find the first binary black hole event horizon with a toroidal topology. It had been predicted that generically the event horizons of merging black holes should briefly have a toroidal topology, but such a phase has never been seen prior…
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…