High-spin binary black hole mergers

TL;DR

This paper investigates high-spin binary black hole mergers with spins perpendicular to the orbital plane, providing estimates for the extremal angular momenta of merger remnants through numerical simulations.

Contribution

It extends the parameter space of black hole spins studied and estimates the range of remnant angular momenta near the extremal spin limits.

Findings

Estimated minimum remnant angular momentum: 0.341 ± 0.004

Estimated maximum remnant angular momentum: 0.951 ± 0.004

Simulations reach near the largest initial spins possible with Bowen-York data.

Abstract

We study identical mass black hole binaries with spins perpendicular to the binary's orbital plane. These binaries have individual spins ranging from $s/m^2=-0.90$ to 0.90, ($s_1 = s_2$ in all cases) which is near the limit possible with standard Bowen-York puncture initial data. The extreme cases correspond to the largest initial spin simulations to date. Our results expand the parameter space covered by Rezzolla {\it et al.} and, when combining both data sets, we obtain estimations for the minimum and maximum values for the intrinsic angular momenta of the remnant of binary black hole mergers of $J/M^2=0.341 \pm 0.004$ and $0.951 \pm 0.004$ respectively. Note, however, that these values are reached through extrapolation to the singular cases $|s_1| = |s_2| = 1$ and thus remain as {\it estimates} until full-fledged numerical simulations provide confirmation.