Exploring black hole superkicks

km/s for equal-mass binaries with anti-aligned initial spins in the orbital plane. In general the dynamics of spinning black holes can be extremely complicated and are difficult to analyze and understand. In contrast, the ``superkick'' configuration is an example with a high degree of symmetry that also exhibits exciting physics. We exploit the simplicity of this ``test case'' to study more closely the role of spin in black-hole recoil and find that: the recoil is with good accuracy proportional to the difference between the

(l = 2, m = \pm 2)

modes of

\Psi_4

, the major contribution to the recoil occurs within

30M

before and after the merger, and that this is after the time at which a standard post-Newtonian treatment breaks down. We also discuss consequences of the

(l = 2, m = \pm 2)

asymmetry in the gravitational wave signal for the angular dependence of the SNR and the mismatch of the gravitational wave signals corresponding to the north and south poles.

98.80.Jk
04.30.Db
95.30.Sf
04.25.dg
black hole: binary
recoil
spin: decoupling
gravitational radiation
asymmetry: angular dependence
numerical calculations

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