Binary black hole merger in the extreme mass ratio limit

Alessandro Nagar; Thibault Damour; Angelo Tartaglia

doi:10.1088/0264-9381/24/12/S08

paper

Binary black hole merger in the extreme mass ratio limit

arXiv:gr-qc/0612096 · doi:10.1088/0264-9381/24/12/S08

Abstract

We discuss the transition from quasi-circular inspiral to plunge of a system of two nonrotating black holes of masses $m_{1}$ and $m_{2}$ in the extreme mass ratio limit $m_{1} m_{2} ≪ (m_{1} + m_{2})^{2}$ . In the spirit of the Effective One Body (EOB) approach to the general relativistic dynamics of binary systems, the dynamics of the two black hole system is represented in terms of an effective particle of mass $μ \equiv m_{1} m_{2} / (m_{1} + m_{2})$ moving in a (quasi-)Schwarzschild background of mass $M \equiv m_{1} + m_{2}$ and submitted to an $O (μ)$ radiation reaction force defined by Padé resumming high-order Post-Newtonian results. We then complete this approach by numerically computing, à la Regge-Wheeler-Zerilli, the gravitational radiation emitted by such a particle. Several tests of the numerical procedure are presented. We focus on gravitational waveforms and the related energy and angular momentum losses. We view this work as a contribution to the matching between analytical and numerical methods within an EOB-type framework.

14 pages, six figures. Revised version. To appear in the CQG special issue based around New Frontiers in Numerical Relativity conference, Golm (Germany), July 17-21 2006