Gravitational Radiation Capture between Unequal Mass Black Holes

The gravitational radiation capture between unequal mass black holes without spins is investigated with numerical relativistic simulations, and compared with the Post-Newtonian approximations. The parabolic approximation which assumes that the gravitational radiation from a weakly hyperbolic orbit is the same as that from the parabolic orbit is adopted. Using the radiated energies from the parabolic orbit simulations, we have obtained the impact parameters (b) of the gravitational radiation captures for weakly hyperbolic orbits with respect to the initial energy. The most energetic encounters occur around the boundary between the direct merging and the fly-by orbits, and we find that several percent of the total ADM initial energy can be emitted at the peak. The equal mass BHs emit more energies than unequal mass BHs at the same initial orbital angular momentum in the case of the fly-by orbits. The impact parameters obtained with numerical relativity deviate from those in Post-Newtonian when the encounter is very strong ($b{\leq}100M$), and the deviations are more conspicuous at the high mass ratio.