Perturbational Treatment of the Gravitational Potential Effect on Binary Black Hole Evolution

Abstract

Binary black hole (BBH) systems are usually located in the gravitational potential well formed by a massive black hole (BH), which is mostly located in the center of a galaxy. In most existing studies, the BBH systems are treated as isolated systems, while the effect of the background is ignored. The validity of the approximation is based on the belief that the background gravitational field from other sources is extremely weak compared with the strong gravitational field produced by the BBH itself during the evolution, and can be neglected in gravitational wave detection. However, it is still interesting to check how valid this approximation is. In this work, instead of simulating the three-BH problem with a fully relativistic treatment, we use a perturbational scheme to investigate the effect of the background gravitational potential on the evolution of a BBH, especially on the waveform of its gravitational radiation. Four scenarios are considered including the head-on collision and the inspiral-to-merger process of a BBH which is either freefalling towards or circularly orbiting around a third large BH. The head-on collision and the circular inspiral are two limits of all possible configurations. The existence of the background gravitational potential changes the arrival time of the gravitational wavefront of a BH, prolongs the wavelength, and increases the gravitational radiation energy. And most interestingly, the background gravitational potential induces the higher-order modes of the gravitational wave of a BBH. These interesting phenomena can be explained by the gravitational redshift effect and the change of eccentricity of a BBH's orbit from the background gravitational potential.

updated version of Journal of Physics: Conference Series 330 (2011) 012016

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