Inspiral of Equal-Mass Black Holes with Spin Anti-Aligned to the Orbital Angular Momentum and of Magnitude 0.95

The spins have magnitude 0.95, are parallel to each other, but are anti-aligned with the orbital angular momentum. This simulation is described in a publication in Phys. Rev. D., in press. The paper can also be accesed at arXiv:1010.2777.

Movie displaying the evolution of the spin function (imaginary part, χ, of the Penrose-Rindler complex curvature, κ) on the apparent horizons

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Movie displaying the evolution of the scalar curvature, R, on the apparent horizons

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Note that aside from corrections that become important only near the time of merger, the spin function χ and scalar curvature R should agree well with -2B_nn and -2E_nn, respectively, where B_nn and E_nn are the horizon vorticity and tendicity, respectively.