MG13 - Talk detail

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We report on the first fully non-linear numerical simulations of charged-black-hole collisions, described by the electrovacuum Einstein-Maxwell equations. We focus on head-on collisions of non-spinning black holes, starting from rest and with the same charge to mass ratio Q/M. The addition of charge to black holes introduces a new interesting channel of radiation and dynamics, most of which seem to be captured by Newtonian dynamics and flat-space intuition. We observe that the amount of gravitational-wave energy generated throughout the collision decreases by about three orders of magnitude as the charge-to-mass ratio Q/M is increased from 0 to 0.98. We interpret this decrease as a consequence of the smaller accelerations present for larger values of the charge. In contrast, the ratio of energy carried by electromagnetic to gravitational radiation increases, reaching about 22% for the maximum Q/M ratio explored, in good agreement with analytic predictions.

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