Modeling the BMS transformation induced by a binary black hole merger

Understanding the characteristics of the remnant black hole formed in a binary black hole merger is crucial for conducting gravitational wave astronomy. Typically, models of remnant black holes provide information about their mass, spin, and kick velocity. However, other information related to the supertranslation symmetries of the BMS group, such as the memory effect, is also important for characterizing the final state of the system. In this work, we build a model of the BMS transformation that maps a binary black hole’s inspiral frame to the remnant black hole’s canonical rest frame. Training data for this model are created using high-precision numerical relativity simulations of quasicircular systems with mass ratios 𝑞 ≤8 and spins parallel to the orbital angular momentum with magnitudes 𝜒1, 𝜒2≤0.8. We use Gaussian process regression to model the BMS transformations over the three-dimensional parameter space (𝑞,𝜒𝑧1,𝜒𝑧2). The physics captured by this model is strictly nonperturbative and cannot be obtained from post-Newtonian approximations alone, as it requires knowledge of the strong nonlinear effects that are sourced during the merger. Apart from providing the first model of the supertranslation induced by a binary black hole merger, we also find that the kick velocities predicted using Cauchy-characteristic evolution waveforms are, on average,  ∼5% larger than the ones obtained from extrapolated waveforms. Our work has broad implications for improving gravitational wave models and studying the large-scale impact of memory, such as on the cosmological background. The fits produced in this work are available through the python package surfinbh under the name nrsur3dq8bmsremnant.