The Shear at the Common Dynamical Horizon in Binary Black Hole Mergers and its Imprint in their Gravitational Radiation

Abstract

We study the correlation between a part of the gravitational field at the common dynamical horizon in the strong field regime and the news of the gravitational radiation received from the system in the weak field regime, in the post-merger phase of quasi-circular, non-spinning binary black hole mergers using numerical relativity simulations. We find that, as in the inspiral phase Phys.Rev.Lett.125,121101, the shear of the common dynamical horizon formed late into the inspiral continues to be well correlated with the news of the outgoing gravitational radiation even at early times. We show by fitting that the shear contains certain quasi-normal frequencies and information about the masses and spins of the remnant and the parent black holes, providing evidence to support the horizon correlation conjecture holds for dynamical horizons in binary black hole mergers.