THE FINAL SPIN FROM BINARY BLACK HOLES IN QUASI-CIRCULAR ORBITS

By Fabian Hofmann, E. Barausse, Luciano Rezzolla. 2016

135 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We revisit the problem of predicting the spin magnitude and direction of the black hole (BH) resulting from the merger of two BHs with arbitrary masses and spins inspiraling in quasi-circular orbits. We do this by analyzing a catalog of 619 recent numerical-relativity simulations collected from the literature and spanning a large variety of initial conditions. By combining information from the post-Newtonian approximation, the extreme mass-ratio limit, and perturbative calculations, we improve our previously proposed phenomenological formulae for the final remnant spin. In contrast with alternative suggestions in the literature, and in analogy with our previous expressions, the new formula is a simple algebraic function of the initial system parameters and is not restricted to binaries with spins aligned/anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum but can be employed for fully generic binaries. The accuracy of the new expression is significantly improved, especially for almost extremal progenitor spins and for small mass ratios, yielding an rms error σ ≈ 0.002 for aligned/anti-aligned binaries and σ ≈ 0.006 for generic binaries. Our new formula is suitable for cosmological applications and can be employed robustly in the analysis of the gravitational waveforms from advanced interferometric detectors.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/280a2cf16af0bb7fca1a79b3332cc21f46fbd198

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Citations in the corpus

Tests of general relativity with the binary black hole signals from the LIGO-Virgo catalog GWTC-1 (2019, methodology): “, [84–86] for fitting formulae derived from numerical simulations, or Table I”
Are LIGO's Black Holes Made from Smaller Black Holes? (2017, methodology): “We compute probability density functions of dimensionless spin magnitudes as follows: we start by taking a large (6.25× 106) ensemble of BHs, and then randomly pick pairs of BHs from this first generation and merge each pair, calculating the final spin from the Hofmann et al. (2016) formula.”
Surrogate models for precessing binary black hole simulations with unequal masses (2019, background): “As a result, several approximate models that are much faster to evaluate have been developed for both waveforms [21–31] and remnant properties [18, 19, 32–50].”
GWTC-2.1: Deep extended catalog of compact binary coalescences observed by LIGO and Virgo during the first half of the third observing run (2021, background): “[147] Fabian Hofmann, Enrico Barausse, and Luciano Rezzolla, “The final spin from binary black holes in quasicircular orbits,” Astrophys.”
GWTC-1: A Gravitational-Wave Transient Catalog of Compact Binary Mergers Observed by LIGO and Virgo during the First and Second Observing Runs (2018, background): “[140] Fabian Hofmann, Enrico Barausse, and Luciano Rezzolla, “The final spin from binary black holes in quasi-circular orbits,” Astrophys.”
Constraining Stellar-mass Black Hole Mergers in AGN Disks Detectable with LIGO (2017, background): “Binary orbital angular momentum (Lb) is the dominant contributor to the spin of the merged BH binary so equal mass BH mergers yield merger products with a 0.7~∣ ∣ (Hofmann et al. 2016).”