Gravitational recoil from binary black hole mergers in scalar field clouds

Abstract

In vacuum, the gravitational recoil of the final black hole from the merger of two black holes depends exclusively on the mass ratio and spins of the coalescing black holes, and on the eccentricity of the binary. If matter is present, accretion by the merging black holes may modify significantly their masses and spins, altering both the dynamics of the binary and the gravitational recoil of the remnant black hole. This paper considers such a scenario. We investigate the effects on the kick of the final black hole from immersing the binary in a scalar field cloud. We consider two types of configurations: one with nonspinning and unequal-mass black holes, and a second with equal mass and spinning holes. For both types, we investigate how the gravitational recoil of the final black hole changes as we vary the energy density of the scalar field. We find that the accretion of the scalar field by the merging black holes could have a profound effect. For the nonspinning, unequal-mass binary black holes, the kicks are in general larger than in the vacuum case, with speeds of $\ensuremath{\sim}1,200\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{km}/\mathrm{s}$ for binaries with mass ratio $2\ensuremath{\mathbin:}1$, 1 order of magnitude larger than in vacuum. For equal mass, binaries with black holes with spins aligned with the orbital angular momentum, kicks larger than in vacuum are also found. For systems with spins in the superkick configuration, the scalar field triggers a similar dependence of the kicks with the entrance angle at merger as in the vacuum case but in this case depending on the strength of the scalar field.