Katy Clough, Queen Mary University, London — Feb 6, 2022

There are several well-motivated scenarios in which dark matter could be present around black holes at a sufficient level to impact on the gravitational waveform of a merger. However, developing templates for the impact of such environments is challenging - in particular one issue that requires more attention is how to select and impose appropriate initial conditions that represent the state of the binary and its environment at the late, dynamical, strong field phase of the merger. A correct specification will be crucial in obtaining sufficiently accurate waveforms and avoiding degeneracies with other effects.