Relativistic encounters in dense stellar systems

Understand

Two coalescing black holes (BHs) represent a conspicuous source of gravitational waves (GWs).

• The merger involves 17 parameters in the general case of Kerr BHs, so that a successful identification and parameter extraction of the information encoded in the waves will provide us with a detailed description of the physics of BHs.
• A search based on matched-filtering for characterization and parameter extraction requires the development of some $10^{15}$ waveforms.
• If a third additional BH perturbed the system, the waveforms would not be applicable, and we would need to increase the number of templates required for a valid detection.