CaltechAUTHORS
Published December 15, 2013 | Version Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

Periastron advance in spinning black hole binaries: Gravitational self-force from numerical relativity

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of Maryland, College Park
  • 2. ROR icon Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
  • 3. ROR icon Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
  • 4. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 5. ROR icon Cornell University
  • 6. ROR icon California State University, Fullerton

Abstract

We study the general relativistic periastron advance in spinning black hole binaries on quasicircular orbits, with spins aligned or antialigned with the orbital angular momentum, using numerical-relativity simulations, the post-Newtonian approximation, and black hole perturbation theory. By imposing a symmetry by exchange of the bodies' labels, we devise an improved version of the perturbative result and use it as the leading term of a new type of expansion in powers of the symmetric mass ratio. This allows us to measure, for the first time, the gravitational self-force effect on the periastron advance of a nonspinning particle orbiting a Kerr black hole of mass M and spin S=−0.5M^2, down to separations of order 9M. Comparing the predictions of our improved perturbative expansion with the exact results from numerical simulations of equal-mass and equal-spin binaries, we find a remarkable agreement over a wide range of spins and orbital separations.

Additional Information

© 2013 American Physical Society. Received 2 September 2013; published 9 December 2013. A. B. and A. L. T. acknowledge support from NSF through Grants No. PHY-0903631 and No. PHY-1208881. A. B. also acknowledges support from NASA through Grant No. NNX09AI81G and A. L. T. from the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics. A. M. and H. P. acknowledge support from NSERC of Canada, from the Canada Research Chairs Program, and from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. D. H., L. K., G. L., and S. T. acknowledge support from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and NSF Grants No. PHY-1306125 and No. PHYS-1005426 at Cornell. M. S., B. S., and N. T. gratefully acknowledge support from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and NSF Grants No. PHY-1068881, No. PHY-1005655, and No. DMS-1065438 at Caltech. The numerical relativity simulations were performed at the GPC supercomputer at the SciNet HPC Consortium [65]; SciNet is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) under the auspices of Compute Canada; the Government of Ontario; Ontario Research Fund–Research Excellence; and the University of Toronto. Further computations were performed on the Caltech computer cluster Zwicky, which was funded by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and the NSF MRI-R2 Grant No. PHY- 0960291, on SHC at Caltech, which is supported by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, and on the NSF XSEDE network under Grant No. TG-PHY990007N.

Attached Files

Published - PhysRevD.88.124027.pdf

Submitted - 1309.0541v2.pdf

Files

1309.0541v2.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
43401
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20140116-093422080

Related works

Describes
http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.0541 (URL)

Funding

NSF
PHY-0903631
NSF
PHY-1208881
NASA
NNX09AI81G
NSERC (Canada)
Canada Research Chairs Program
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
Sherman Fairchild Foundation
NSF
PHY-1306125
NSF
PHYS-1005426
NSF
PHY-1068881
NSF
PHY-1005655
NSF
DMS-1065438
Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics
NSF MRI-R2
PHY-0960291
NSF XSEDE
TG-PHY990007N
Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)
Government of Ontario
Ontario Research Fund-Research Excellence
University of Toronto
Compute Canada

Dates

Created
2014-01-16
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-10
Created from EPrint's last_modified field