paper

Induced Spins from Scattering Experiments of Initially Nonspinning Black Holes

arXiv:1909.08621 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.100.124045

Abstract

When two relativistically boosted, nonspinning black holes pass by one another on a scattering trajectory, we might expect the tidal interaction to spin up each black hole. We present the first exploration of this effect, appearing at fourth post-Newtonian order, with full numerical relativity calculations. The basic setup for the calculations involves two free parameters: the initial boost of each black hole and the initial angle between the velocity vectors and a line connecting the centers of the black holes, with zero angle corresponding to a head-on trajectory. To minimize gauge effects, we measure final spins only if the black holes reach a final separation of at least . Fixing the initial boost, we find that as the initial angle decreases toward the scattering/nonscattering limit, the spin-up grows nonlinearly. In addition, as initial boosts are increased from to , the largest observed final dimensionless spin on each black hole increases nonlinearly from to . Based on these results, we conclude that much higher spin-ups may be possible with larger boosts, although achieving this will require improved numerical techniques.

arXiv comment8 pages, 5 figures, matches published version

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