Black hole merger estimates in Einstein-Maxwell and Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton gravity

Abstract

The recent birth of gravitational wave astronomy invites a new generation of precision tests of general relativity. Signatures of black hole (BH) mergers must be systematically explored in a wide spectrum of modified gravity theories. Here, we turn to one such theory in which the initial value problem for BH mergers is well posed, the Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton system. We present conservative estimates for the merger parameters (final spins, quasinormal modes) based on techniques that have worked well for ordinary gravity mergers and utilize information extracted from test particle motion in the final BH metric. The computation is developed in parallel for the modified gravity BHs (we specifically focus on the Kaluza-Klein value of the dilaton coupling, for which analytic BH solutions are known) and ordinary Kerr-Newman BHs. We comment on the possibility of obtaining final BHs with spins consistent with current observations.

23 pages, 23 figures, v2: minor improvements, accepted to PRD

References in corpus (9)

• Are eikonal quasinormal modes linked to the unstable circular null geodesics?
• Neutron-star mergers in scalar-tensor theories of gravity
• Estimating the final spin of a binary black hole coalescence
• Testing the no-hair theorem with black hole ringdowns using TIGER
• Numerical Relativity and Astrophysics
• Projected Constraints on Scalarization with Gravitational Waves from Neutron Star Binaries
• Electromagnetic Luminosity of the Coalescence of Charged Black Hole Binaries
• Collisions of charged black holes
• Can binary mergers produce maximally spinning black holes?

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Post-Kerr black hole spectroscopy
• On the motion of hairy black holes in Einstein-Maxwell-dilaton theories