Davide Gerosa

Precessional instability in binary black holes with aligned spins

Here we study the stability of black-hole binaries with spins (anti)aligned with the orbital angular momentum. Aligned configurations are points of equilibrium, but are they stable? If the heavier black-hole is aligned and the lighter one is anti-aligned, this turns out to be unstable! And the onset of this instability can be in the LIGO or LISA band!

Davide Gerosa, Michael Kesden, Richard O’Shaughnessy, Antoine Klein, Emanuele Berti, Ulrich Sperhake, Daniele Trifirò.
Physical Review Letters 115 (2015) 141102.
arXiv:1506.09116 [gr-qc].
Selected as PRL Editors’ Suggestion.
Supporting material available here.

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