Dissection of a merger-ringdown waveform in the small-mass-ratio limit
Abstract
Work over the past two decades has unveiled the rich phenomenology of black hole binary mergers and subsequent ringdowns, involving a tapestry of quasinormal modes (QNMs), nonlinearities, tails, transients, and secular effects including gravitational memory. Here we develop a framework for analyzing nonlinear merger-ringdown features in the small-mass-ratio limit, where individual effects can be cleanly isolated. Specializing to the case of a quasicircular, nonspinning black hole binary, we find the waveform sharply divides into a pre-merger extended inspiral phase, a merger phase lasting roughly half a cycle, and a post-merger ringdown dominated by QNMs. We show quadratic QNMs dominate over linear overtones in the ringdown phase for comparable-to-intermediate mass ratios, and we highlight nonlinear effects of gravitational-wave memory, including cubic wave-zone phenomena analogous to horizon absorption effects.
Related
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BibTeX
@misc{bourg2026dissection,
title = {{Dissection of a merger-ringdown waveform in the small-mass-ratio limit}},
author = {Patrick Bourg and Lorenzo Küchler and Benjamin Leather and Kevin Cunningham and Jack Lewis and Adam Pound and Béatrice Bonga and Marc Casals and Rodrigo Panosso Macedo},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.06861},
eprint = {2609.06861},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06861},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Dissection of a merger-ringdown waveform in the small-mass-ratio limit
AU - Patrick Bourg
AU - Lorenzo Küchler
AU - Benjamin Leather
AU - Kevin Cunningham
AU - Jack Lewis
AU - Adam Pound
AU - Béatrice Bonga
AU - Marc Casals
AU - Rodrigo Panosso Macedo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/06
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.06861
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.06861
AB - Work over the past two decades has unveiled the rich phenomenology of black hole binary mergers and subsequent ringdowns, involving a tapestry of quasinormal modes (QNMs), nonlinearities, tails, transients, and secular effects including gravitational memory. Here we develop a framework for analyzing nonlinear merger-ringdown features in the small-mass-ratio limit, where individual effects can be cleanly isolated. Specializing to the case of a quasicircular, nonspinning black hole binary, we find the waveform sharply divides into a pre-merger extended inspiral phase, a merger phase lasting roughly half a cycle, and a post-merger ringdown dominated by QNMs. We show quadratic QNMs dominate over linear overtones in the ringdown phase for comparable-to-intermediate mass ratios, and we highlight nonlinear effects of gravitational-wave memory, including cubic wave-zone phenomena analogous to horizon absorption effects.
ER -