Effects of post-Newtonian spin alignment on the distribution of black-hole recoils

Emanuele Berti, Michael Kesden, and Ulrich Sperhake
Phys. Rev. D 85, 124049 – Published 21 June 2012

Abstract

Recent numerical relativity simulations have shown that the final black hole produced in a binary merger can recoil with a velocity as large as 5000km/s. Because of enhanced gravitational-wave emission in the so-called “hang-up” configurations, this maximum recoil occurs when the black-hole spins are partially aligned with the orbital angular momentum. We revisit our previous statistical analysis of post-Newtonian evolutions of black-hole binaries in the light of these new findings. We demonstrate that despite these new configurations with enhanced recoil velocities, spin alignment during the post-Newtonian stage of the inspiral will still significantly suppress (or enhance) kick magnitudes when the initial spin of the more massive black hole is more (or less) closely aligned with the orbital angular momentum than that of the smaller hole. We present a preliminary study of how this post-Newtonian spin alignment affects the ejection probabilities of supermassive black holes from their host galaxies with astrophysically motivated mass ratio and initial spin distributions. We find that spin alignment suppresses (enhances) ejection probabilities by 40% (20%) for an observationally motivated mass-dependent galactic escape velocity, and by an even greater amount for a constant escape velocity of 1000km/s. Kick suppression is thus at least a factor two more efficient than enhancement.

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  • Received 13 March 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.85.124049

© 2012 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Emanuele Berti1,2,*, Michael Kesden3,†, and Ulrich Sperhake4,1,2,5,‡

  • 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Mississippi, University, Mississippi 38677, USA
  • 2California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91109, USA
  • 3Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, New York University, 4 Washington Pl., New York, New York 10003, USA
  • 4Institut de Ciéncies de l’Espai (CSIC-IEEC), Facultat die Ciéncies, Campus UAB, E-08193 Bellaterra, Spain
  • 5Centro Multidisciplinar de Astrofísica—CENTRA, Departamento de Física, Instituto Superior Técnico—IST, 1049-001 Lisboa, Portugal

  • *berti@phy.olemiss.edu
  • mhk10@nyu.edu
  • sperhake@tapir.caltech.edu

See Also

Final spins from the merger of precessing binary black holes

Michael Kesden, Ulrich Sperhake, and Emanuele Berti
Phys. Rev. D 81, 084054 (2010)

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Vol. 85, Iss. 12 — 15 June 2012

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