Gravity seminar - Maarten van de Meent Seminar

It is generally believed that only the final phase (plunge, merger, and ringdown) of a binary inspiral can produce asymmetric gravitational wave emission, leading to a recoil on the final black hole due to linear momentum carried away. When the mass ratio m/M between the two black holes is small, the recoil velocity is proportional to (m/M)^2. I will demonstrate that for eccentric inspirals resonances between the orbital frequencies during the inspiral (which occur generically) can lead to an addition recoil proportional to (m/M)^3/2. Explicit calculation of this effect shows, that in extreme cases, recoil velocities around 1000 km/s are possible