Wide nutation: binary black-hole spins repeatedly oscillating from full alignment to full anti-alignment
Abstract
Within the framework of 2PN black-hole binary spin precession, we explore configurations where one of the two spins oscillates from being completely aligned with the orbital angular momentum to being completely anti-aligned with it during a single precession cycle. This wide nutation is the extreme limit of the generic phenomenon of spin nutation in black-hole binaries. Crucially, wide nutation happens on the short precession time scale and it is not a secular effect due to gravitational-wave radiation reaction. The spins of these binaries, therefore, flip repeatedly as one of these special configurations is entered. Binaries with total mass M, mass ratio q, and dimensionless spin Χ_1 (χ_2) of the more (less) massive black hole are allowed to undergo wide nutation at binary separations r ⩽ r_(wide) ≡ [(qχ_2−χ_1)/(1−q)]^2M. Sources that are more likely to nutate widely have similar masses and effective spins close to zero.
Additional Information
© 2019 IOP Publishing Ltd. Received 14 November 2018, revised 18 March 2019, Accepted for publication 29 March 2019, Published 15 April 2019. We thank Yanbei Chen, Alan Weinstein and Kaze Wong for discussions. DG is supported by NASA through Einstein Postdoctoral Fellowship Grant No. PF6-170152 by the Chandra X-ray Center, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for NASA under Contract NAS8-03060. AL is supported by the LIGO SURF program at Caltech funded by NSF Grant No. PHY-1757303 and the NSBP Carl Albert Rouse Undergraduate Research Fellowship. EB is supported by NSF Grants Nos. PHY-1841464, AST-1841358 and PHY-090003, and NASA Grant No. 17-ATP17-0225. MK is supported by NSF Grant No. PHY-1607031. US acknowledges support by European Union's H2020 ERC Grant No. MaGRaTh–646597, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant No. 690904, COST Action Grant No. CA16104, the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics at Kyoto University under Grant No. YITP-T-18-05, STFC Grant Nos. ST/P000673/1, ST/H008586/1 and ST/K00333X/1, PRACE Grant No. 2016163948, BIS Grant No. ST/J005673/1 and NSF Grant No. PHY-090003. Computational work was performed on Caltech computer cluster Wheeler supported by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and Caltech.Attached Files
Submitted - 1811.05979.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 94742
- DOI
- 10.1088/1361-6382/ab14ae
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190417-103236487
- PF6-170152
- NASA Einstein Fellowship
- NAS8-03060
- NASA
- PHY-1757303
- NSF
- Caltech Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)
- PHY-1841464
- NSF
- AST-1841358
- NSF
- PHY-090003
- NSF
- 17-ATP17-0225
- NASA
- PHY-1607031
- NSF
- 646597
- European Research Council (ERC)
- 690904
- Marie Curie Fellowship
- CA16104
- COST Action
- YITP-T-18-05
- Kyoto University
- ST/P000673/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- ST/H008586/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- ST/K00333X/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- 2016163948
- Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE)
- ST/J005673/1
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- PHY-090003
- NSF
- Sherman Fairchild Foundation
- Created
-
2019-04-17Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2023-03-02Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- TAPIR