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arXiv · 1612.05263

On the equal-mass limit of precessing black-hole binaries

Davide Gerosa·Ulrich Sperhake·Jakub Vošmera
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Abstract

We analyze the inspiral dynamics of equal-mass precessing black-hole binaries using multi-timescale techniques. The orbit-averaged post-Newtonian evolutionary equations admit two constants of motion in the equal-mass limit, namely the magnitude of the total spin $S$ and the effective spin $\xi$. This feature makes the entire dynamics qualitatively different compared to the generic unequal-mass case, where only $\xi$ is constant while the variable $S$ parametrizes the precession dynamics. For fixed individual masses and spin magnitudes, an equal-mass black-hole inspiral is uniquely characterized by the two parameters $(S,\xi)$: these two numbers completely determine the entire evolution under the effect of radiation reaction. In particular, for equal-mass binaries we find that (i) the black-hole binary spin morphology is constant throughout the inspiral, and that (ii) the precessional motion of the two black-hole spins about the total spin takes place on a longer timescale than the precession of the total spin and the orbital plane about the total angular momentum.

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Davide Gerosa, Ulrich Sperhake, Jakub Vošmera. 2016-12-15. On the equal-mass limit of precessing black-hole binaries. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382/aa5e58

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