Gravitational recoil from binary black hole mergers in scalar field clouds

TL;DR

This paper explores how scalar field clouds around merging black holes significantly influence their gravitational recoil, potentially increasing kick velocities compared to vacuum scenarios, with implications for black hole dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces the first detailed analysis of scalar field effects on black hole merger recoil velocities, highlighting substantial modifications from vacuum predictions.

Findings

Scalar fields can increase recoil velocities up to 1,200 km/s.

Scalar field effects depend on the binary's mass ratio and spin configuration.

Recoil behavior in scalar fields resembles vacuum cases but with enhanced magnitudes.

Abstract

In vacuum, the gravitational recoil of the final black hole from the merger of two black holes depends exclusively on the mass ratio and spins of the coalescing black holes, and on the eccentricity of the binary. If matter is present, accretion by the merging black holes may modify significantly their masses and spins, altering both the dynamics of the binary and the gravitational recoil of the remnant black hole. This paper considers such scenario. We investigate the effects on the kick of the final black hole from immersing the binary in a scalar field cloud. We consider two types of configurations: one with non-spinning and unequal-mass black holes, and a second with equal mass and spinning holes. For both types, we investigate how the gravitational recoil of the final black hole changes as we vary the energy density of the scalar field. We find that the accretion of scalar field by the merging black holes could have a profound effect. For the non-spinning, unequal-mass binary black holes, the kicks are in general larger than in the vacuum case, with speeds of approximately 1,200 km/s for binaries with mass ratio 2:1, one order of magnitude larger than in vacuum. For equal mass, binaries with black holes with spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum, kicks larger than in vacuum are also found. For systems with spins in the super-kick configuration, the scalar field triggers a similar dependence of the kicks with the entrance angle at merger as in the vacuum case but in this case depending on the strength of the scalar field.