The maximum radiated energy and final spin of high speed collision of two black holes

TL;DR

This study uses extensive numerical simulations to determine the maximum gravitational energy emitted during high-speed black hole mergers, revealing weak dependence on initial spins and estimating a maximum radiated energy of about 32% of the total mass.

Contribution

The paper provides the first comprehensive numerical analysis of maximum radiated energy and final spin in high-speed black hole collisions, including an analytical model for energy emission.

Findings

Maximum radiated energy is approximately 32% of the total mass.

Final black hole spin can reach up to 0.987.

Weak dependence of radiated energy on initial black hole spins.

Abstract

We performed a series of 769 full numerical simulations of high energy collision of black holes to search for the maximum gravitational energy emitted $E_{rad}$, during their merger. We consider equal mass binaries with spins pointing along their orbital angular momentum $\vec{L}$ and perform a search over impact parameters $b$ and initial linear momenta $p/m=\gamma v$ to find the maximum $E_{rad}$ for a given spin $\vec{S}$. The total radiated energy proves to have a weak dependence on the intrinsic spin $s$ of the holes, for the sequence $s=+0.8, 0.0, -0.8$ studied here. We thus estimate the maximum $E_{rad}^{max}/M_{ADM}\approx32\%\pm2\%$ for these direct merger encounters. We also explore the radiated angular momentum and the maximum spin of the merger remnant (within these configurations), finding $\alpha_f^{max}=0.987$. We then use the zero frequency limit expansion to analytically model the radiated energy in the small impact parameter and large initial linear momentum regime.