Extreme Gravitational Interactions in the Problem of Three Black Holes in General Relativity

TL;DR

This paper explores the complex dynamics of three black holes in general relativity, focusing on extreme gravitational interactions and their gravitational wave signatures through numerical simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic study of extreme gravitational interactions in three-black-hole systems using numerical relativity, highlighting their gravitational wave emissions.

Findings

Strong nonlinear gravitational wave emissions observed.

Wavelet analysis reveals signatures of extreme interactions.

Different configurations produce distinguishable gravitational wave patterns.

Abstract

We study the three-body problem going from Newtonian mechanics to general relativity. In the classical case, we model the interactions in a typical chaotic configuration, identifying Extreme Gravitational Interactions (EGIs), namely transients in which the system manifests complex, highly-energetic dynamics. We then concentrate on the main part of the work, by selecting these EGIs as initial data for the general relativistic case, and performing a campaign of numerical relativity simulations. To provide a comprehensive menu of cases, we investigate different global configurations. By comparing with the more ``quiet'' two-body inspiral, we observe strong nonlinear emission of gravitational waves. The multi-body signals have been inspected by employing both Fourier and wavelet analyses, showing net differences among the global configurations. The wavelet analysis reveals the reminiscence of the EGIs in the three black holes problem. Such a survey of simulations might be a guide for future observations.