Evolutions of unequal mass, highly spinning black hole binaries

TL;DR

This paper simulates a highly spinning, unequal mass black hole binary to measure the maximum recoil velocity of the remnant, providing key data for gravitational wave source modeling.

Contribution

It presents the first simulation of a highly spinning, unequal mass binary with specific spin orientations to measure maximum recoil velocities.

Findings

Remnant black hole recoil velocity of 500 km/s

Provides data on remnant mass, spin, and waveform characteristics

Identifies a key parameter space point for gravitational wave modeling

Abstract

We evolve a binary black hole system bearing a mass ratio of $q=m_1/m_2=2/3$ and individual spins of $S^z_1/m_1^2=0.95$ and $S^z_2/m_2^2=-0.95$ in a configuration where the large black hole has its spin antialigned with the orbital angular momentum, $L^z$, and the small black hole has its spin aligned with $L^z$. This configuration was chosen to measure the maximum recoil of the remnant black hole for nonprecessing binaries. We find that the remnant black hole recoils at 500km/s, the largest recorded value from numerical simulations for aligned spin configurations. The remnant mass, spin, and gravitational waveform peak luminosity and frequency also provide a valuable point in parameter space for source modeling.