Magnetic-Field and Matter Distribution Dependence of EM Emission during Supermassive Binary Black Hole Mergers

Black-hole binary (BHB) mergers provide a prime source for current and future interferometric gravitational-wave observatories. Massive BHB mergers may often take place in plasma-rich environments, leading to the possibility of a concurrent electromagnetic signal observable by traditional astronomical facilities. However, many critical questions about the generation of such counterparts remain unanswered. In Kelly et al. (2017) [PRD 96:123003], we found a universal form for the time-evolving Poynting luminosity from such systems immersed in initially uniformly magnetized plasma, and demonstrated that after a settling time, this luminosity is relatively insensitive to the initial magnetic field strength.

Here, we extend the work of Kelly et al. (2017) to investigate the dependence of the classical Poynting luminosity on variations in the initial magnetic field and matter distribution in the vicinity of the binary.