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arXiv · 2206.08025

Pseudospectrum and binary black hole merger transients

José Luis Jaramillo
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Abstract

The merger phase of binary black hole coalescences is a transient between an initial oscillating regime (inspiral) and a late exponentially damped phase (ringdown). In spite of the non-linear character of Einstein equations, the merger dynamics presents a surprisingly simple behaviour consistent with effective linearity. On the other hand, energy loss through the event horizon and by scattering to infinity renders the system non-conservative. Hence, the infinitesimal generator of the (effective) linear dynamics is a non-selfadjoint operator. Qualitative features of transients in linear dynamics driven by non-selfadjoint (in general, non-normal) operators are captured by the pseudospectrum of the time generator. We propose the pseudospectrum as a unifying framework to thread together the phases of binary black hole coalescences, from the inspiral-merger transition up to the late quasinormal mode ringdown.

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José Luis Jaramillo. 2022-06-16. Pseudospectrum and binary black hole merger transients. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382%2Fac8ddc

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