A taxonomy of black-hole binary spin precession and nutation

Abstract

Binary black holes with misaligned spins will generically induce both precession and nutation of the orbital angular momentum $\mathbf{L}$ about the total angular momentum $\mathbf{J}$. These phenomena modulate the phase and amplitude of the gravitational waves emitted as the binary inspirals to merger. We introduce a "taxonomy" of binary black-hole spin precession that encompasses all the known phenomenology, then present five new phenomenological parameters that describe generic precession and constitute potential building blocks for future gravitational waveform models. These are the precession amplitude $⟨{\theta }_L⟩$, the precession frequency $⟨{\Omega }_L⟩$, the nutation amplitude $\Delta {\theta }_L$, the nutation frequency $\omega$, and the precession-frequency variation $\Delta {\Omega }_L$. We investigate the evolution of these five parameters during the inspiral and explore their statistical properties for sources with isotropic spins. In particular, we find that nutation of $\mathbf{L}$ is most prominent for binaries with high spins ($\chi \gtrsim 0.5$) and moderate mass ratios ($q\sim 0.6$).

14 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Accepted in PRD

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Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Systematic biases due to waveform mismodeling in parametrized post-Einsteinian tests of general relativity: The impact of neglecting spin precession and higher modes
• Efficient multi-timescale dynamics of precessing black-hole binaries
• Accurate and Efficient Waveform Model for Precessing Binary Black Holes
• GRMHD study of accreting massive black hole binaries in astrophysical environment: a review
• Constraining black-hole binary spin precession and nutation with sequential prior conditioning
• Inferring Binary Properties from Gravitational Wave Signals
• Merging Black Holes: Assessing the Performance of Two Analytic Gravitational Waves Models
• Mass and spin coevolution of black holes inspiralling through dark matter
• Signatures of spin precession and nutation in isolated black-hole binaries
• Characterization of merging black holes with two precessing spins