Black-hole kicks: a tool to measure the accuracy of gravitational-wave models

Understand

Asymmetric binary systems radiate linear momentum through gravitational waves, leading to the recoil of the merger remnant.

• Black-hole kicks have attracted much attention because of their astrophysical implications.
• However, little information can be extracted from the observations made by LIGO and Virgo so far.
• In this work, we discuss how the gravitational recoil, an effect that is encoded in the gravitational signal, can be used to test the accuracy of waveform models.