Paths to the Final Black Hole

Black hole uniqueness theorems ensure that, regardless of the details of the merging holes, the final black hole settles down to a Kerr black hole. As a consequence, the final state is characterized by two quantities: the mass and spin of the final black hole. This path-independence to the final state comes at the same time with a path-specificity: The gravitational waves emitted during the inspiral are strongly sensitive to the characteristics of the binary system. In other words, there is strong correlation between the emission of gravitational radiation and the path to the final black hole. We will present results of the degree of degeneracy of the path to approach the final state for non-processing binary black hole mergers and show LIGO's ability to disentangle this degeneracy.