Inspiral of Equal-Mass Black Holes with Spin Anti-Aligned to the Orbital Angular Momentum and of Magnitude 0.95

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The spins have magnitude 0.95, are parallel to each other, but are anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum. This simulation is described in a publication in Phys. Rev. D., in press. The paper can also be accesed at arXiv:1010.2777.

Movie displaying the evolution of the spin function (imaginary part, χ, of the Penrose-Rindler complex curvature, κ) on the apparent horizons

 

Movie displaying the evolution of the scalar curvature, R, on the apparent horizons

 

Note that aside from corrections that become important only near the time of merger, the spin function χ and scalar curvature R should agree well with -2B_nn and -2E_nn, respectively, where B_nn and E_nn are the horizon vorticity and tendicity, respectively.