What does a binary black hole merger look like?

Andy Bohn, William Throwe, François Hébert, Katherine Henriksson, Darius Bunandar, Mark A. Scheel, Nicholas W. Taylor

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

99 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present a method of calculating the strong-field gravitational lensing caused by many analytic and numerical spacetimes. We use this procedure to calculate the distortion caused by isolated black holes (BHs) and by numerically evolved BH binaries. We produce both demonstrative images illustrating details of the spatial distortion and realistic images of collections of stars taking both lensing amplification and redshift into account. On large scales the lensing from inspiraling binaries resembles that of single BHs, but on small scales the resulting images show complex and in some cases self-similar structure across different angular scales.

Original languageEnglish
Article number065002
JournalClassical and Quantum Gravity
Volume32
Issue number6
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 19 2015

Keywords

  • black holes
  • gravitational lensing
  • numerical relativity
  • ray tracing

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