Talk detail

Participant	Barausse, Enrico
Institution	University of Guelph - Department of Physics, 50 Stone Road East - Guelph - Ontario - Canada

Session	AN1	Accepted		Order	Time
Talk	Oral abstract	Title	The complete non-spinning effective-one-body metric at linear order in the mass ratio
Co-authors
Abstract	Using the results of related work, in which the binding energy of a circular-orbit non-spinning compact binary system is computed at leading-order beyond the test-particle approximation, the exact expression of the effective-one-body (EOB) metric component g^eff_tt is obtained through first order in the mass ratio. Combining these results with the recent gravitational self-force calculation of the periastron advance for circular orbits in the Schwarzschild geometry, the EOB metric component g^eff_rr is also determined at linear order in the mass ratio. These results assume that the mapping between the real and effective Hamiltonians at the second and third post-Newtonian (PN) orders holds at all PN orders. Our findings also confirm the advantage of resumming the PN dynamics around the test-particle limit if the goal is to obtain a flexible model that can smoothly connect the test-mass and equal-mass limits.

Session	GW1	Accepted		Order	Time
Talk	Oral abstract	Title	The evolution of the spins of massive black holes
Co-authors
Abstract	After reviewing the importance of black-hole spins in general relativity, astrophysics and cosmology, I will present a semianalytical model following the coevolution of the spins of massive black holes and their host galaxies. Besides showing results for the spin evolution of massive black holes as a function of redshift, I will discuss the implications of my model for future gravitational-wave detectors such as eLISA/NGO (or a similar mission), DECIGO and the Einstein Telescope, and show that these detectors will provide constraints on galaxy-formation models.

Session	AN2/3	Accepted		Order	Time
Talk	Oral abstract	Title	Test bodies and naked singularities: is the self-force the cosmic censor?
Co-authors
Abstract	It has been recently shown that almost extremal rotating black holes could be spun-up past the extremal limit by the capture of non-spinning test bodies, if one neglects radiative and self-force effects. This would represent a violation of the Cosmic Censorship Conjecture in four-dimensional, asymptotically flat spacetimes. We show that for some of the trajectories giving rise to naked singularities, radiative effects can indeed be neglected. However, for these orbits the conservative self-force is important, and seems to have the right sign to prevent the formation of naked singularities.

Session	AN2/3	Accepted		Order	Time
Talk	Oral abstract	Title	The effective-one-body model for spinning black-hole binaries
Co-authors
Abstract	I will review the effective-one-body formalism, focusing on recent advances in understanding the conservative dynamics of spinning black-hole binaries, as well as on the latest comparisons with perturbative calculations and numerical-relativity simulations.