2008/01/23 by Eloisa Bentivegna, Deirdre Shoemaker, Deirdre M. Shoemaker +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.77.124016
published as Phys.Rev.D77:124016,2008 · 10 Pages and 6 figures
arxiv created 2008/01/23 · openalex publication_date 2008/06/12 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present results obtained by scattering a scalar field off the curved background of a coalescing binary black hole system. A massless scalar field is evolved on a set of fixed backgrounds, each provided by a spatial hypersurface generated numerically during a binary black hole merger. We show that the scalar field scattered from the merger region exhibits quasinormal ringing once a common apparent horizon surrounds the two black holes. This occurs earlier than the onset of the perturbative regime as measured by the start of the quasinormal ringing in the gravitational waveforms. We also use the scalar quasinormal frequencies to associate a mass and a spin with each hypersurface, and observe the compatibility of this measure with the horizon mass and spin computed from the dynamical horizon framework.