Event

The Department of Physics out of the Faculty of Science and Technology (FST) invites the campus community to attend the virtual MPhil Seminar by Ariel Chitan on the topic, The Influence of Mass, Distance and Spin on the Evolution of Triple Black Hole Systems.

The virtual seminar takes place via Zoom on Thursday, October 8 starting at 1:30 p.m.

Zoom link: https://uwi.zoom.us/j/93814725172?pwd=VTcxRjh2eWFNVmhrdk9tSGFhQUhGdz09

Please note: If you are having difficulty accessing the above link, please copy and paste into your respective browser.  

Meeting ID: 938 1472 5172

Passcode:  704361                          

Abstract

The effect of mass unit, distance unit and spin on the evolution of triple black holes systems was studied with the use of numerical simulations. Initial conditions followed from Burrau (1913) and Valtonen et al. (1995) where black holes were placed at the vertices of Pythagorean triangles. This was done for sixteen triangular configurations. This first set of simulations investigated the effect of mass unit - for each configuration, mass unit of the black holes was varied from 100 M – 1012 M in increasing factors of ten. The second set investigated the effect of distance unit on two triangles – the non-hierarchical 3,4,5 configuration and the hierarchical 9,40,41 configuration – distance unit in parsecs was varied as [0.01, 0.1, 0.5, 1, 5, 10, 100, 1000, 10000] for each triangle for all thirteen previous mass units. The third set of simulations focused on the effect of spin where the first black hole (middle mass) was initialized as Kerr and the remaining two left as Schwarzschild. Spin parameter values were varied from [0.00001 0.00001 0.00001] – [0.1 0.1 0.1] in factors of ten. A maximum vector was also included [0.5 0.5 0.5] and a minimum where there was no spin. All simulations were conducted on FORTRAN with the use of ARCcode by Prof. Seppo Mikkola (2013) with relativistic corrections up to the 2.5th pN order. Parameters analysed were lifetimes, number of binary encounters and number of merges. It was found that as the mass of the systems increased, so too did the merger rate. Naturally, the lifetimes of the systems decreased with this mass increase. Smaller systems demonstrated more complicated orbits with greater numbers of binary encounters. For the distance units used, simulations suggest that the Newtonian systems are more affected by the change in distance unit whereas the relativistic systems are affected more by the mass of the systems and merging dominates. 

For more about the Department of Physics, please visit https://sta.uwi.edu/fst/physics/.