Late-Time Tails in Nonlinear Evolutions of Merging Black Holes
We uncover late-time gravitational-wave tails in fully nonlinear 3+1 dimensional numerical relativity simulations of merging black holes, using the highly accurate spec code. We achieve this result by exploiting the strong magnification of late-time tails due to binary eccentricity, recently observed in perturbative evolutions, and showcase here the tail presence in head-on configurations for several mass ratios close to unity. We validate the result through a large battery of numerical tests and detailed comparison with a perturbative evolution, which display striking agreement with full nonlinear ones in the ringdown regime, and very similar tail morphologies. Our results offer yet another confirmation of the highly predictive power of black hole perturbation theory in the presence of a source, even when applied to nonlinear solutions. The late-time tail signal is much more prominent than anticipated until recently, and possibly within reach of gravitational-wave detector measurements, unlocking observational investigations of an additional set of general relativistic predictions on the long-range gravitational dynamics.
Authors
- Michael Boyle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5075-5116)
- G. Carullo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9090-1862)
- Simone Albanesi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7345-4415)
- Kyle C. Nelli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2426-8768)
- William Throwe (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5059-4378)
- Jordan Moxon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9891-8677)
- Marina de Amicis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0808-3026)
- Sebastiano Bernuzzi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2334-0935)
- Anıl Zenginoğlu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7896-6268)
- Keefe Mitman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0276-3856)
- Harald Pfeiffer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9288-519X)
- Vítor Cardoso (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0553-0433)
- Nils L. Vu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5767-3949)
- Nils Deppe (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4557-4115)
- Leo C. Stein (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7559-9597)
- Hannes R. Rüter (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3442-5360)
- Mark A. Scheel
- Alessandro Nagar
- Larry Kidder (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5392-7342)
- C. Melize Ferrus (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2842-2067)
Institutions
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- University of Lisbon (PT)
- King's College London (GB)
- Cornell University (US)
- University of Mississippi (US)
- Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Sezione di Torino (IT)
- Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (DE)
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena (DE)
- University of Birmingham (GB)
- Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (FR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Letters
- Published
- 2025-10-21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/2brx-xnyr
- Citations
- 4
- Primary Topic
- Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 4.62
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- California Institute of Technology
- Villum Fonden
- Sherman Fairchild Foundation
- Space Telescope Science Institute
- European Commission
- National Research Foundation
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
- Danmarks Grundforskningsfond
- Institut Périmètre de physique théorique
- Horizon 2020 Framework Programme