The Merger of Small and Large Black Holes

Abstract

We present simulations of binary black holes mergers in which, after the common outer horizon has formed, the marginally outer trapped surfaces (MOTSs) corresponding to the individual black holes continue to approach and eventually penetrate each other. This has very interesting consequences according to recent results in the theory of MOTSs. Uniqueness and stability theorems imply that two MOTSs which touch with a common outer normal must be identical. This suggests a possible dramatic consequence of the collision between a small and large black hole. If the penetration were to continue to completion then the two MOTSs would have to coalesce, by some combination of the small one growing and the big one shrinking. Here we explore the relationship between theory and numerical simulations, in which a small black hole has halfway penetrated a large one.

17 pages, 11 figures

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• An explicit harmonic code for black-hole evolution using excision
• The time evolution of marginally trapped surfaces
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Cited by in corpus (16)

• Dynamics of marginally trapped surfaces in a binary black hole merger: Growth and approach to equilibrium
• The initial value problem as it relates to numerical relativity
• The interior of a binary black hole merger
• The existence and stability of marginally trapped surfaces
• Ultimate fate of apparent horizons during a binary black hole merger II: Horizons weaving back and forth in time
• GRaM-X: A new GPU-accelerated dynamical spacetime GRMHD code for Exascale computing with the Einstein Toolkit
• MOTS in Schwarzschild: multiple self-intersections and extreme mass ratio mergers
• Horizons in a binary black hole merger I: Geometry and area increase
• Deformation of horizons during a merger
• Inside the Final Black Hole: Puncture and Trapped Surface Dynamics
• Exotic marginally outer trapped surfaces in rotating spacetimes of any dimension
• Geometric horizons in binary black hole mergers
• Marginally Outer Trapped Tori in Black Hole Spacetimes
• Numerical Approach for Corvino-Type Gluing of Brill-Lindquist Initial Data
• Ultimate fate of apparent horizons during a binary black hole merger I: Locating and understanding axisymmetric marginally outer trapped surfaces
• Curvature Invariants and the Geometric Horizon Conjecture in a Binary Black Hole Merger