Astronomy and Astrophysics Seminars

Can spin of the massive black hole in inspiralling black hole binaries flip?

by Anuradha Gupta (DAA - TIFR)

Tuesday, April 10, 2012 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at Colaba Campus ( DAA Seminar Room A269 )
TIFR
Description
Post-Newtonian (PN) accurate dynamics of spinning compact binaries are employed to estimate changes in the directions of spin and orbital angular momentum vectors from the initial direction of the total angular momentum vector J0 during the inspiral. We show that for binaries having only one spinning object, orientations of the spin and orbital angular momentum vectors with respect to J0 remain unchanged during the inspiral. In the general case, changes in the direction of the spin of the massive object from the direction of  J0 are rather small for binaries of arbitrary mass ratio. We comment on the recent conclusion that spin-flip of the dominant black hole can occur during the PN-accurate inspiral.