Related papers: Black Hole Mergers as the Fastest Photon Ring Scra…
We describe recent numerical simulations of the merger of a class of equal mass, non-spinning, eccentric binary black hole systems in general relativity. We show that with appropriate fine-tuning of the initial conditions to a region of…
We consider the problem of how fast a quantum system can scramble (thermalize) information, given that the interactions are between bounded clusters of degrees of freedom; pairwise interactions would be an example. Based on previous work,…
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…
In this paper, we explore the signatures of non-rotating and rotating black hole mergers in the matter-free modified gravity. First, we solve the unstable circular null orbits and the innermost stable circular timelike orbits via the…
Black-hole spacetimes are known to possess closed light rings. We here present a remarkably compact theorem which reveals the physically intriguing fact that these unique null circular geodesics provide the {\it fastest} way, as measured by…
Gravitational waves carry away both energy and angular momentum as binary black holes inspiral and merge. The relative efficiency with which they are radiated determines whether the final black hole of mass $M_f$ and spin $S_f$ saturates…
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…
Black-hole spacetimes with a "photonsphere", a hypersurface on which massless particles can orbit the black hole on circular null geodesics, are studied. We prove that among all possible trajectories (both geodesic and non-geodesic) which…
Mergers of black-hole binaries are expected to release large amounts of energy in the form of gravitational radiation. However, binary evolution models predict merger rates too low to be of observational interest. In this paper we explore…
For a brief moment, a binary black hole (BBH) merger can be the most powerful astrophysical event in the visible universe. Here we present a model fit for this gravitational-wave peak luminosity of nonprecessing quasicircular BBH systems as…
We regard binary black hole (BBH) merger as a map from a simple initial state (two Kerr black holes, with dimensionless spins {\bf a} and {\bf b}) to a simple final state (a Kerr black hole with mass m, dimensionless spin {\bf s}, and kick…
It has recently been pointed out that particles falling freely from rest at infinity outside a Kerr black hole can in principle collide with arbitrarily high center of mass energy in the limiting case of maximal black hole spin. Here we aim…
Black holes are the simplest macroscopic objects, and provide unique tests of General Relativity. They have been compared to the Hydrogen atom in quantum mechanics. Here, we establish a few facts about the simplest systems bound by gravity:…
It has been suggested that maximally spinning black holes can serve as particle accelerators, reaching arbitrarily high center-of-mass energies. Despite several objections regarding the practical achievability of such high energies, and…
Binary black hole mergers are among the most violent events in the Universe, leading to extreme warping of spacetime and copious emission of gravitational radiation. Even though black holes are the most compact objects they are not…
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…
The saturation mechanism for the fastest-growing instability of massive scalar field in Kerr metric is identified, assuming saturation by cubic or quartic nonlinearities of the field potential. The resulting spindown rate of the black hole…
Recently, physicists have started applying quantum information theory to black holes. This led to the conjecture that black holes are the fastest scramblers of information, and that they scramble it in time order M log M, where M is the…
The population of binary black hole mergers identified through gravitational waves has uncovered unexpected features in the intrinsic properties of black holes in the universe. One particularly surprising and exciting result is the possible…
Massive binary black holes form at the centre of galaxies that experience a merger episode. They are expected to coalesce into a larger black hole, following the emission of gravitational waves. Coalescing massive binary black holes are…