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Abstract

We present the first results in a new program intended to make the best use of all available technologies to provide an effective understanding of waves from inspiralling black hole binaries in time to assist imminent observations. In particular, we address the problem of combining the close-limit approximation describing ringing black holes and full numerical relativity, required for essentially nonlinear interactions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach using general methods for a model problem, the head-on collision of black holes. Our method allows a more direct physical understanding of these collisions indicating clearly when non-linear methods are important. The success of this method supports our expectation that this unified approach will be able to provide relevant results for black hole binaries in time to assist gravitational wave observations.