A black-hole binary starts its life as two single black holes, and finish it as a single black hole. In between there’s all the complicated dynamics predicted by General Relativity: many orbits, dissipation of energy via gravitational waves, spins that complicate the whole business, and finally the merger which leaves behind a remnant. In this paper we put together different techniques to map this entire story beginning to end, connecting the two asymptotic conditions of a black-hole binary. This work started as a summer project of my student Luca: well done!

Luca Reali, Matthew Mould, Davide Gerosa, Vijay Varma.
Classical and Quantum Gravity 37 (2020) 225005.
arXiv:2005.01747 [gr-qc].