Transition from inspiral to plunge in binary black hole coalescences - art. no. 064015

Combining recent techniques giving nonperturbative resummed estimates of th e damping and conservative parts of the two-body dynamics, we describe the transition-between the adiabatic phase and the plunge, in coalescing binary black holes with comparable masses moving on quasicircular orbits. We give initial dynamical data for numerical relativity investigations, with a fra ction of an orbit left, and provide, for data analysis purposes, an estimat e of the gravitational waveform emitted throughout the inspiral, plunge and coalescence phases.