Systematics of black hole binary inspiral kicks and the slowness approximation

• Main Authors: Price, Richard H. (Author), Khanna, Gaurav (Author), Hughes, Scott A (Author)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor), MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (Contributor), Hughes, Scott A. (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2011-09-23T17:27:51Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

During the inspiral and merger of black holes, the interaction of gravitational wave multipoles carries linear momentum away, thereby providing an astrophysically important recoil, or "kick" to the system and to the final black hole remnant. It has been found that linear momentum during the last stage (quasinormal ringing) of the collapse tends to provide an "antikick" that in some cases cancels almost all the kick from the earlier (quasicircular inspiral) emission. We show here that this cancellation is not due to peculiarities of gravitational waves, black holes, or interacting multipoles, but simply to the fact that the rotating flux of momentum changes its intensity slowly. We show furthermore that an understanding of the systematics of the emission allows good estimates of the net kick for numerical simulations started at fairly late times, and is useful for understanding qualitatively what kinds of systems provide large and small net kicks.
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant no. 0554367)
University of Texas at Brownsville. Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant no. PHY-0449884)
United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant No. NNG05G105G)
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant no. PHY-0902026)
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant no. CNS-0959382)
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant no. PHY-1016906)
United States. Air Force Research Laboratory (CRADA No. 10- RI-CRADA-09)