2010/08/31 by Carlos O. Lousto, C. O. Loustó, Hiroyuki Nakano +2 · 89 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Binary black hole #Black hole (networking) #Classical mechanics #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #General relativity #Geodesic #Gravitation #Gravitational wave #Mass ratio #Mathematical analysis #Mathematics #Numerical analysis #Numerical relativity #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quasinormal mode #Schwarzschild metric #Schwarzschild radius #Spins #astro-ph.CO #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.HE #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.82.104057
published in Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields 82(10) (American Physical Society) · 31 pages, 33 figures revtex 4, Published version. Several fixes throughout
openalex publication_date 2010/11/30 · arxiv created 2010/12/02 · arxiv updated 2010/12/23 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We describe in detail full numerical and perturbative techniques to compute the gravitational radiation from intermediate-mass-ratio black-hole-binary inspirals and mergers. We perform a series of full numerical simulations of nonspinning black holes with mass ratios q=1/10 and q=1/15 from different initial separations and for different finite-difference resolutions. In order to perform those full numerical runs, we adapt the gauge of the moving punctures approach with a variable damping term for the shift. We also derive an extrapolation (to infinite radius) formula for the waveform extracted at finite radius. For the perturbative evolutions we use the full numerical tracks, transformed into the Schwarzschild gauge, in the source terms of the Regge-Wheller-Zerilli Schwarzschild perturbations formalism. We then extend this perturbative formalism to take into account small intrinsic spins of the large black hole, and validate it by computing the quasinormal mode frequencies, where we find good agreement for spins |a/M|<0.3. Including the final spins improves the overlap functions when comparing full numerical and perturbative waveforms, reaching 99.5% for the leading (\ensuremathℓ,m)=(2,2) and (3, 3) modes, and 98.3% for the nonleading (2, 1) mode in the q=1/10 case, which includes 8 orbits before merger. For the q=1/15 case, we obtain overlaps near 99.7% for all three modes. We discuss the modeling of the full inspiral and merger based on a combined matching of post-Newtonian, full numerical, and geodesic trajectories.