Gravitational Wave Beacons

Abstract

We explore spinning, precessing, unequal mass binary black holes to display the long term orbital angular momentum, $\vec{L}$, flip dynamics. We study two prototypical cases of binaries with mass ratios $q=1/7$ and $q=1/15$ and a misaligned spin of the large black hole (with an intrinsic spin magnitude of $S_2/m_2^2=0.85$). We conduct full numerical simulations, for nearly 14 and 18 orbits respectively, to evolve the binary down to merger and display a full $L$-flip cycle. The pattern of radiation of such systems is particularly interesting, displaying strong polarization-dependent variation of amplitudes at precessional frequencies, leading to distinctive observational consequences for ground, space, and pulsar timing based gravitational wave detectors. These waveform features are strongly directional dependent and measurements of gravitational waves polarizations can be exploited to disentangle the binary's parameters in various astrophysical scenarios.

arXiv comment9 pages, 11 figures, 4 tables. To appear in Physical Review D

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• The SXS Collaboration catalog of binary black hole simulations
• The RIT binary black hole simulations catalog
• The second RIT binary black hole simulations catalog and its application to gravitational waves parameter estimation
• The Third RIT binary black hole simulations catalog
• Mini-disk accretion onto spinning black hole binaries: quasi-periodicities and outflows
• Exploring the small mass ratio binary black hole merger via Zeno's dichotomy approach
• Kicking gravitational wave detectors with recoiling black holes
• Superposed metric for spinning black hole binaries approaching merger
• Parametrizing gravitational-wave polarizations
• Numerical-relativity validation of effective-one-body waveforms in the intermediate-mass-ratio regime
• Upgraded antennas for pulsar observations in the Argentine Institute of Radio astronomy
• Study of the Intermediate Mass Ratio Black Hole Binary Merger up to 1000:1 with Numerical Relativity
• The Fourth RIT binary black hole simulations catalog: Extension to Eccentric Orbits