Final spin from the coalescence of two black holes

Abstract

We provide a compact analytic formula to compute the spin of the black hole produced by the coalescence of two black holes following a quasicircular inspiral. Without additional fits than those already available for binaries with aligned or antialigned spins, but with a minimal set of assumptions, we derive an expression that can model generic initial spin configurations and mass ratios, thus covering all of the 7-dimensional space of parameters. A comparison with simulations already shows very accurate agreements with all of the numerical data available to date, but we also suggest a number of ways in which our predictions can be further improved.