Speaker
Description
Current waveform models of binary black hole mergers incorporate a large amount of analytical information during the inspiral phase. In contrast, post-merger descriptions typically rely on phenomenological ansätze informed by numerical relativity, with the quasi-normal mode frequencies providing the only direct analytical input. I will present a first-principles framework to study the dynamical excitation of quasi-normal modes during the plunge–merger–ringdown stages in EMRI systems, and discuss its implications for ringdown modeling. In this description, the QNMs amplitudes gain a non-trivial time dependence, and a new redshifted component appears in the signal at intermediate times. I will conclude by discussing novel insights into the analytical modelling of the prompt response.