Searcharxiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2301.07215

Remnant black hole properties from numerical-relativity-informed perturbation theory and implications for waveform modelling

Tousif Islam·Scott E. Field·Gaurav Khanna
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

During binary black hole (BBH) mergers, energy and momenta are carried away from the binary system as gravitational radiation. Access to the radiated energy and momenta allows us to predict the properties of the remnant black hole. We develop a Python package gw_remnant to compute the remnant mass, remnant spin, peak luminosity, and the final kick imparted on the remnant black hole from the gravitational radiation. Using this package, we compute the remnant properties of the final black hole in case of non-spinning BBH mergers with mass ratios ranging from q=2.5 to q=1000 using waveform modes generated from BHPTNRSur1dq1e4, a recently developed numerical-relativity-informed surrogate model based on black-hole perturbation theory framework. We validate our results against the remnant properties estimated from numerical relativity (NR) surrogate models in the comparable mass ratio regime and against recently available high-mass-ratio NR simulations at q=[15,32,64]. We find that our remnant property estimates computed from fluxes at future null infinity closely match the estimates obtained from the NR surrogate model of apparent horizon data. Using Gaussian process regression fitting methods, we train a surrogate model, {BHPTNR_Remnant, for the properties of the remnant black hole arising from BBH mergers with mass ratios from q=2.5 to q=1000. Finally, we discuss potential improvements in the BHPTNRSur1dq1e4 waveform model when including remnant information. We make both the gw_remnant and BHPTNR_Remnant packages publicly available.

Explore related subjects

gr-qcastro-ph.HE

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

Tousif Islam, Scott E. Field, Gaurav Khanna. 2023-01-17. Remnant black hole properties from numerical-relativity-informed perturbation theory and implications for waveform modelling. https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.07215

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Electrovacuum Black Hole Uniqueness

We prove the black hole uniqueness conjecture in the axially symmetric, stationary, electrovacuum setting, subject to the refined asymptotic analysis of the associated singular harmonic maps, which includes an analyticity hypothesis at the axes. More precisely, it is shown that any asymptotically flat solution of the Einstein--Maxwell equations in this class, with more than one black hole horizon component is either: Majumdar--Papapetrou, up to a duality rotation, in which case all logarithmic angle defects vanish, or every finite axis rod logarithmic angle defect is strictly negative and hence every interaction force is strictly attractive. The proof extends the singular harmonic map method used for vacuum Kerr uniqueness in [18].

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Constraining Modified Mass-to-Horizon Cosmology Through Primordial Inflationary Observables

We investigate slow-roll inflation in a modified cosmological framework inspired by a generalized mass-to-horizon relation (MHR), $M=\gamma {c^2 L^n}/{G}$, where $n$ is a real parameter and $\gamma$ a dimensional constant. Using Padmanabhan's emergence paradigm, we derive the modified Friedmann equations for a flat FRW universe and analyze the dynamics of a canonical scalar field (inflaton) under the slow-roll approximation. We study the resulting inflationary phenomenology for power-law and Starobinsky potentials. For power-law potentials, the MHR modification fails to reconcile these models with current CMB constraints on $r$ and $n_s$. In contrast, Starobinsky inflation exhibits significant sensitivity to deviations from $n=1$. A perturbative analysis ($n=1+\Delta$) yields corrections to inflationary observables. We observe that the scalar power-spectrum normalization, under a fixed-Starobinsky prescription, imposes the stringent constraint $0.960 \lesssim n \lesssim 1.040$ for $N=60$ efolds. This is considerably tighter than spectral-index bounds. Our results establish inflation, particularly Starobinsky-like models, as a sensitive probe of generalized horizon thermodynamics and departures from standard MHR scaling.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2026

Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.

gr-qc↗