FRIDAY, April 3, 2009
TAPIR Seminar, 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM, 114 E. Bridge
"Final Spins and Kicks Resulting from Binary Black Hole Mergers," Mike Kesden, Caltech.

Abstract: Numerical simulations of binary black hole mergers have revealed that the spins and recoils of the final black hole depend sensitively on the mass ratio and spins of the initial quasi-circular binary. However, current numerical simulations cannot accurately simulate mergers with mass ratios less than 0.1 and initial spins greater than 0.9. Here we explore how several analytic approaches might we combined with numerical relativity to predict the
results of mergers in these important regimes.