Relativistic mergers of black hole binaries have large, similar masses, low spins and are circular

TL;DR

This paper shows that black hole binaries with large, similar masses tend to have low spins and nearly circular orbits, simplifying gravitational wave searches and aiding detection efforts.

Contribution

It demonstrates that hyperstellar black holes have low spins regardless of formation channel and that their binaries are typically nearly circular with similar masses.

Findings

HSBs with 30-100 solar masses have low spins (<0.5).

Binary members tend to have similar masses.

Most sources will have nearly zero eccentricities.

Abstract

Gravitational waves are a prediction of general relativity, and with ground-based detectors now running in their advanced configuration, we will soon be able to measure them directly for the first time. Binaries of stellar-mass black holes are among the most interesting sources for these detectors. Unfortunately, the many different parameters associated with the problem make it difficult to promptly produce a large set of waveforms for the search in the data stream. To reduce the number of templates to develop, one must restrict some of the physical parameters to a certain range of values predicted by either (electromagnetic) observations or theoretical modeling. In this work we show that "hyperstellar" black holes (HSBs) with masses $30 \lesssim M_{\rm BH}/M_{\odot} \lesssim 100$, i.e black holes significantly larger than the nominal $10\,M_{\odot}$, will have an associated low value for the spin, i.e. $a<0.5$. We prove that this is true regardless of the formation channel, and that when two HSBs build a binary, each of the spin magnitudes is also low, and the binary members have similar masses. We also address the distribution of the eccentricities of HSB binaries in dense stellar systems using a large suite of three-body scattering experiments that include binary-single interactions and long-lived hierarchical systems with a highly accurate integrator, including relativistic corrections up to ${\cal O}(1/c^5)$. We find that most sources in the detector band will have nearly zero eccentricities. This correlation between large, similar masses, low spin and low eccentricity will help to accelerate the searches for gravitational-wave signals.