Related papers: Black Hole Mergers as the Fastest Photon Ring Scra…
We present the results of 14 simulations of nonspinning black hole binaries with mass ratios $q=m_1/m_2$ in the range $1/100\leq q\leq1$. For each of these simulations we perform three runs at increasing resolution to assess the finite…
Massive black hole (MBH) binaries, formed as a result of galaxy mergers, are expected to harden by dynamical friction and three-body stellar scatterings, until emission of gravitational waves (GWs) leads to their final coalescence.…
Increased eccentricity of a black hole binary leads to reduced merger times. With n-body simulations and analytic approximations including the effects of general relativity (GR), we show that even a low mass companion orbiting a black hole…
Possible formation mechanisms of massive close binary black holes that can merge in the Hubble time to produce powerful gravitational wave bursts detected during advanced LIGO O1 science run are briefly discussed. The pathways include the…
The origin of black hole mergers discovered by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational-wave observatories is currently unknown. GW190521 is the heaviest black hole merger detected so far. Its observed high mass and possible spin-induced orbital…
Recent calculations of gravitational radiation recoil generated during black-hole binary mergers have reopened the possibility that a merged binary can be ejected even from the nucleus of a massive host galaxy. Here we report the first…
We discuss the transition from quasi-circular inspiral to plunge of a system of two nonrotating black holes of masses $m_1$ and $m_2$ in the extreme mass ratio limit $m_1m_2\ll (m_1+m_2)^2$. In the spirit of the Effective One Body (EOB)…
Observations of gravitational waves provide new opportunities to study our Universe. In particular, mergers of stellar black holes are the main targets of the current gravitational wave experiments. In order to make accurate predictions, it…
We present new numerical-relativity simulations of eccentric merging black holes with initially antiparallel spins lying in the orbital plane (the so-called \emph{superkick} configuration). Binary eccentricity boosts the recoil of the…
We present fully general relativistic simulations of the quasi-circular inspiral and merger of charged, non-spinning, binary black holes with charge-to-mass ratio $\lambda \le 0.3$. We discuss the key features that enabled long term and…
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…
The major source of ground-based gravitational wave detectors, the inspiral and merger of comparable mass binary black holes (BBH), consists of a slow quasicircular inspiral, a merger to form a single remnant hole, and the quasinormal…
We study to what extent the effective-one-body description of the dynamical state of a nonspinning, coalescing binary black hole (considered either at merger, or after ringdown) agrees with numerical relativity results. This comparison uses…
We find strong numerical evidence for a new phenomenon in a binary black hole spacetime, namely the merger of marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs). By simulating the head-on collision of two non-spinning unequal mass black holes, we…
Recent detailed observations of the radio-loud quasar 3C 186 indicate the possibility that a supermassive recoiling black hole is moving away from the host galaxy at a speed of nearly 2100km/s. If this is the case, we can model the mass…
Binary-black-hole (BBH) mergers can take place close to a supermassive black hole (SMBH) while being in a bound orbit around the SMBH. In this paper, we study such bound triple systems and show that including the strong gravity effects of…
In numerical simulations of black hole binaries, Pretorius and Khurana [Class. Quant. Grav. {\bf 24}, S83 (2007)] have observed critical behaviour at the threshold between scattering and immediate merger. The number of orbits scales as…
A massive black hole binary might resonantly trap a star (e.g. a white dwarf) and the gas released by its tidal disruption might emit electromagnetic wave signals around the coalescence of the binary. With post-Newtonian equations of motion…
The radiation of linear momentum imparts a recoil (or "kick") to the center of mass of a merging black hole binary system. Recent numerical relativity calculations have shown that eccentricity can lead to an approximate 25% increase in…
Galaxy mergers are common processes in the Universe. As a large fraction of galaxies hosts at their centres a central supermassive black hole (SMBH), mergers can lead to the formation of a supermassive black hole binary (SMBHB). The…