Intermediate-Mass-Ratio Black-Hole Binaries: Numerical Relativity Meets Perturbation Theory

We study black-hole binaries in the intermediate-mass-ratio regime 0.01 less than or similar to q less than or similar to 0.1 with a new technique that makes use of nonlinear numerical trajectories and efficient perturbative evolutions to compute waveforms at large radii for the leading and nonleading (l, m) modes. As a proof-of-concept, we compute waveforms for q = 1/10. We discuss applications of these techniques for LIGO and VIRGO data analysis and the possibility that our technique can be extended to produce accurate waveform templates from a modest number of fully nonlinear numerical simulations.