Related papers: Binary black holes on a budget: Simulations using …
Binary black hole mergers are of great interest to the astrophysics community, not least because of their promise to test general relativity in the highly dynamic, strong field regime. Detections of gravitational waves from these sources by…
Coalescing binary black holes are among the primary science targets for second generation ground-based gravitational wave (GW) detectors. Reliable GW models are central to detection of such systems and subsequent parameter estimation. This…
We propose a new radial coordinate to write the Kerr metric in puncture form. Unlike the quasi-radial coordinate introduced previously, the horizon radius remains finite in our radial coordinate in the extreme Kerr limit a/M -> 1. This…
Gravitational waves are a prediction of general relativity, and with ground-based detectors now running in their advanced configuration, we will soon be able to measure them directly for the first time. Binaries of stellar-mass black holes…
In response to LIGO's observation of GW170104, we performed a series of full numerical simulations of binary black holes, each designed to replicate likely realizations of its dynamics and radiation. These simulations have been performed at…
We present the results of 74 new simulations of nonprecessing spinning black hole binaries with mass ratios $q=m_1/m_2$ in the range $1/7\leq q\leq1$ and individual spins covering the parameter space $-0.95\leq\alpha_{1,2}\leq0.95$ with one…
Recent studies of accretion onto supermassive black hole binaries suggest that much, perhaps most, of the matter eventually accretes onto one hole or the other. If so, then for binaries whose inspiral from ~1 pc to 0.001 - 0.01 pc is driven…
In numerical evolutions of binary black holes (BBH) it is desirable to easily control the orbital eccentricity of the BBH, and the number of orbits completed by the binary through merger. This paper presents fitting formulae that allow to…
In this work, we use general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations to explore the effect of spin orientation on the dynamics of gas in the vicinity of merging black holes. We present a suite of eight simulations of unequal-mass,…
The detection and subsequent inference of binary black hole signals rely heavily on the accuracy of the waveform model employed. In the highly non-linear, dynamic, and strong-field regime near merger, these waveforms can only be accurately…
We study the evolution of a massive black hole pair in a rotationally supported nuclear disc. The distributions of stars and gas mimic the nuclear region of a gas-rich galaxy merger remnant. Using high-resolution SPH simulations, we follow…
In general relativity, when two black holes merge they produce a rotating (Kerr) black hole remnant. According to perturbation theory, the remnant emits "ringdown" radiation: a superposition of exponentials with characteristic complex…
Black hole-neutron star (BHNS) binaries are important sources of gravitational waves for second-generation interferometers, and BHNS mergers are also a proposed engine for short, hard gamma-ray bursts. The behavior of both the spacetime…
The behavior of merging black holes (including the emitted gravitational waves and the properties of the remnant) can currently be computed only by numerical simulations. This paper introduces ten numerical relativity simulations of binary…
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…
In the field of gravitational wave science, next-generation detectors will be substantially more accurate than the current suite of detectors. Numerical relativity simulations of binary black hole (BBH) gravitational waveforms must become…
We present a new choice of initial data for binary black hole simulations that significantly improves the efficiency of high-spin simulations. We use spherical Kerr-Schild coordinates, where the horizon of a rotating black hole is…
The orbital motion of inspiralling and coalescing black hole binaries can be investigated using a variety of approximation schemes and numerical methods within general relativity: post-Newtonian expansions, black hole perturbation theory,…
A chain regularization method is combined with special purpose computer hardware to study the evolution of massive black hole binaries at the centers of galaxies. Preliminary results with up to N=260,000 particles are presented. The decay…
We have investigated, both analytically and numerically, accreting supermassive black hole binaries as they inspiral due to gravitational radiation to elucidate the decoupling of binaries from their disks and inform future multi-messenger…