Consequences of Gravitational Radiation Recoil

Coalescing binary black holes experience an impulsive kick due to anisotropicemission of gravitational waves. We discuss the dynamical consequences of therecoil accompanying massive black hole mergers. Recoil velocities aresufficient to eject most coalescing black holes from dwarf galaxies andglobular clusters, which may explain the apparent absence of massive blackholes in these systems. Ejection from giant elliptical galaxies would be rare,but coalescing black holes are displaced from the center and fall back on atime scale of order the half-mass crossing time. Displacement of the blackholes transfers energy to the stars in the nucleus and can convert a steepdensity cusp into a core. Radiation recoil calls into question models that growsupermassive black holes from hierarchical mergers of stellar-mass precursors.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, emulateapj style; minor changes made; accepted to ApJ Letter