Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-20-2004
Journal / Book Title
The Astrophysical Journal
Abstract
Gravitational waves from the coalescence of binary black holes carry away linear momentum, causing center of mass recoil. This "radiation rocket" effect has important implications for systems with escape speeds of order the recoil velocity. We revisit this problem using black hole perturbation theory, treating the binary as a test mass spiraling into a spinning hole. For extreme ratios (q ≡ m1/m2 ≪ 1), we compute the recoil for the slow in-spiral epoch of binary coalescence very accurately; these results can be extrapolated to q ∼ 0.4 with modest accuracy. Although the recoil from the final plunge contributes significantly to the final recoil, we are only able to make crude estimates of its magnitude. We find that the recoil can easily reach ∼ 100-200 km s-1 but most likely does not exceed ∼500 km s-1. Although much lower than previous estimates, this recoil is large enough to have important astrophysical consequences. These include the ejection of black holes from globular clusters, dwarf galaxies, and high-redshift dark matter halos.
DOI
10.1086/421552
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Favata, Marc; Hughes, Scott A.; and Holz, Daniel E., "How Black Holes Get Their Kicks: Gravitational Radiation Recoil Revisited" (2004). Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 79.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/physics-astron-facpubs/79
Published Citation
Favata, M., Hughes, S. A., & Holz, D. E. (2004). How black holes get their kicks: Gravitational radiation recoil revisited. The Astrophysical Journal, 607(1), L5.