Large merger recoils and spin flips from generic black hole binaries

We report the first results from the evolution of generic black hole binaries, i.e., binaries containing unequalmass black holes with misaligned spins. Our configuration, which has a mass ratio of, consists of an initially 2 : 1 nonspinning hole orbiting a larger, rapidly spinning hole ( specific spin), with the spin direction a/m = 0.885 oriented -45 degrees with respect to the orbital plane. We track the inspiral and merger for similar to 2 orbits and find that the remnant receives a substantial kick of 454 km s(-1), more than twice as large as the maximum kick from nonspinning binaries. The remnant spin direction is flipped by 103 degrees with respect to the initial spin direction of the larger hole. We performed a second run with antialigned spins, lying in the orbital plane that produces a kick a/m = +/- 0.5 of similar to 1830 km s(-1) off the orbital plane. This value scales to nearly 4000 km s(-1) for maximally spinning holes. Such a large recoil velocity opens up the possibility that a merged binary can be ejected even from the nucleus of a massive host galaxy.