Remnant mass, spin, and recoil from spin aligned black-hole binaries

James Healy; Carlos O. Lousto; Yosef Zlochower

doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.90.104004

paper

Remnant mass, spin, and recoil from spin aligned black-hole binaries

arXiv:1406.7295 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.90.104004

Abstract

We perform a set of 36 nonprecessing black-hole binary simulations with spins either aligned or counteraligned with the orbital angular momentum in order to model the final mass, spin, and recoil of the merged black hole as a function of the individual black hole spin magnitudes and the mass ratio of the progenitors. We find that the maximum recoil for these configurations is $V_{ma x} = 526 \pm 23 k m / s$ , which occurs when the progenitor spins are maximal, the mass ratio is $q_{ma x} = m_{1} / m_{2} = 0.623 \pm 0.038$ , the smaller black-hole spin is aligned with the orbital angular momentum, and the larger black-hole spin is counteraligned ( $α_{1} = - α_{2} = 1$ ). This maximum recoil is about $80 k m / s$ larger than previous estimates, but most importantly, because the maximum occurs for smaller mass ratios, the probability for a merging binary to recoil faster than $400 k m / s$ can be as large as $17%$ , while the probability for recoils faster than $250 k m / s$ can be as large as $45%$ . We provide explicit phenomenological formulas for the final mass, spin, and recoil as a function of the individual BH spins and the mass difference between the two black holes. Here we include terms up through fourth-order in the initial spins and mass difference, and find excellent agreement (within a few percent) with independent results available in the literature. The maximum radiated energy is $E_{rad} / m \approx 11.3%$ and final spin $α_{rem}^{max} \approx 0.952$ for equal mass, aligned maximally spinning binaries.

19 pages, 25 figures, revtex 4

Remnant mass, spin, and recoil from spin aligned black-hole binaries

Abstract

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