2017/02/28 by James Healy, Carlos O. Lousto, Carlos O Lousto +2 · 38 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Elliptic orbit #Equations of motion #Hamiltonian (control theory) #Motion (physics) #Numerical analysis #Numerical relativity #Phase space #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Theory of relativity #Waveform #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1361-6382/aa7929
published in Classical and Quantum Gravity 34(14), 145011 (IOP Publishing) · 14 pages, 4 figures
openalex created_date 2017/02/24 · openalex publication_date 2017/06/29 · arxiv created 2020/11/09 · arxiv updated 2020/11/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract We use post-Newtonian (PN) approximations to determine the initial orbital and spin parameters of black hole binaries that lead to low-eccentricity inspirals when evolved with numerical relativity techniques. In particular, we seek initial configurations that lead to very small eccentricities at small separations, as is expected for astrophysical systems. We consider three cases: (i) quasicircular orbits with no radial velocity, (ii) quasicircular orbits with an initial radial velocity determined by radiation reaction, and (iii) parameters obtained from evolution of the PN equations of motion from much larger separations. We study eight cases of spinning, nonprecessing, unequal mass binaries. We then use several definitions of the eccentricity, based on orbital separations and waveform phase and amplitude, and find that using the complete 3PN Hamiltonian for quasicircular orbits to obtain the tangential orbital momentum, and using the highest-known-order radiation reaction expressions to obtain the radial momentum, leads to the lowest eccentricity. The accuracy of this method even exceeds that of inspiral data based on 3PN and 4PN evolutions.