Related papers: Black Hole Mergers and Unstable Circular Orbits
We study the spin dynamics of individual black holes in a binary system. In particular we focus on the polar precession of spins and the possibility of a complete flip of spins with respect to the orbital plane. We perform a full numerical…
The origin, environment, and evolution of stellar-mass black hole binaries are still a mystery. One of the proposed binary formation mechanisms is manifest in dynamical interactions between multiple black holes. A resulting framework of…
We re-examine the possibility that astrophysical jet collimation may arise from the geometry of rotating black holes and the presence of high-energy particles resulting from a Penrose process, without the help of magnetic fields. Our…
We derive an analytic phenomenological expression that predicts the final mass of the black-hole remnant resulting from the merger of a generic binary system of black holes on quasi-circular orbits. Besides recovering the correct…
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…
Despite a decade's worth of gravitational wave observation, the origin of the binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by the LIGO-VIRGO-Kagra (LVK) collaboration remains an open question. Towards assessing the feasibility and prevalence of…
From the results of numerical scattering experiments and simulations of a massive black hole binary in spherically symmetric and shallow cores it has been deduced that most likely the shrinking process stalls due to loss-cone depletion…
Gravitational waves from the explosive merger of distant black holes are encoded with details regarding the complex extreme-gravity spacetime present at their source. Famously described by the Kerr spacetime metric for rotating black holes…
Black hole-neutron star mergers resulting in the disruption of the neutron star and the formation of an accretion disk and/or the ejection of unbound material are prime candidates for the joint detection of gravitational-wave and…
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…
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,…
Characterizing the properties of black holes is one of the most important science objectives for gravitational-wave observations. Astrophysical evidence suggests that black holes that are nearly extremal (i.e. spins near the theoretical…
The construction of initial data for black-hole binaries usually involves the choice of free parameters that define the spins of the black holes and essentially the eccentricity of the orbit. Such parameters must be chosen carefully to…
Because they are likely to accrete substantial amounts of interstellar gas, merging supermassive binary black holes are expected to be strong multimessenger sources, radiating gravitational waves, photons from thermal gas, and photons from…
We present a model for determining the dimensionless spin parameter and mass of the black hole remnant of black hole-neutron star mergers with parallel orbital angular momentum and initial black hole spin. This approach is based on the…
Black hole - neutron star (BHNS) mergers are a promising target of current gravitational-wave (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) searches, being the putative origin of ultra-relativistic jets, gamma-ray emission, and r-process nucleosynthesis.…
Black hole (BH) triples represent one of the astrophysical pathways for BH mergers in the Universe detectable by LIGO and VIRGO. We study the formation of BH triples via binary-binary encounters in dense clusters, showing that one-third of…
The recent detection of GW190521 stimulated ideas on how to populate the predicted black hole pair-instability mass gap. One proposed scenario is the dynamical merger of two stars below the pair instability regime forming a star with a…
We study the fully nonlinear dynamical evolution of binary black hole data, whose orbital parameters are specified via the effective potential method for determining quasi-circular orbits. The cases studied range from the Cook-Baumgarte…
An accurate and precise measurement of the spins of individual merging black holes is required to understand their origin. While previous studies have indicated that most of the spin information comes from the inspiral part of the signal,…