language: en

SPIN DIAGRAMS FOR EQUAL-MASS BLACK HOLE BINARIES WITH ALIGNED SPINS

Luciano Rezzolla, 1,2 Ernst Nils Dorband, 1 Christian Reisswig, 1 Peter Diener, 2,3 Denis Pollney, 1 Erik Schnetter, 2,3 and Be �la Szila �gyi 1
Received 2007 August 29; accepted 2008 February 19

ABSTRACT Binary black hole systems with spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum are of special interest, as they may be the preferred end state of the inspiral of generic supermassive binary black hole systems. In view of this, we have computed the inspiral and merger of a large set of binary systems of equal-mass black holes with spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum but otherwise arbitrary. By least-square fitting the results of these simulations, we have constructed two ''spin diagrams'' which provide straightforward information about the recoil velocity jv kick j and the final black hole spin a Bn in terms of the dimensionless spins a 1 and a 2 of the two initial black holes. Overall, they suggest a maximum recoil velocity of jv kick j ' 441:94 km s �1 , and minimum and maximum final spins a Bn ' 0:3471 and a Bn � 0:9591, respectively.

Subject headingg s: black hole physics ? gravitational waves ? relativity ? stars: statistics

[Online material: color figures]

1. INTRODUCTION