Tidal interaction in binary-black-hole inspiral - art. no. 231101

Tidal torque may lead to important effects in the strong field interaction at the end point of the inspiral of two rapidly rotating black holes. We po int out here that in such a case the exchange of spin and orbital angular m omentum may significantly affect the energy and waveform of late stage grav itational waves, and may play an important role in the shedding of excess a ngular momentum. We argue that numerical relativity, the only tool for dete rmining the importance of tidal torque, should be more specifically focused on binary configurations with aligned, large, angular momenta.