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GR: Fachverband Gravitation und Relativitätstheorie

GR 9: Numerische Relativitätstheorie I

GR 9.2: Talk

Thursday, March 12, 2009, 12:05–12:25, A214

Zoom whirl orbits of black holes — •Roman Gold — TPI, FSU Jena, Germany

For several years research on the binary black hole problem has focused on quasi-circular (minimally eccentric) orbits because of the circularizing effect of gravitational radiation in a binary system.

Allowing significant eccentricity reveals an interesting region of the parameter space of the GR two-body problem: zoom whirl orbits. These orbits are loosely defined as the behaviour of two bodies that approach each other on very eccentric trajectories, move (or "whirl") around each other several times very closely in a nearly circular orbit and then eventually merge or separate. These events produce some of the most intense gravitational wave signals in black hole binaries and therefore may provide an upper bound on the radiated energy for two equal mass Schwarzschild black holes.

I show results from numerical studies of the Einstein equation in vacuum for these zoom whirl orbits including the orbital dynamics, the extracted waves and the radiated energy.