Motivated by the TeV-scale gravity scenarios, we study gravitational radiation in the head-on collision of two black holes in higher-dimensional spacetimes using a close-limit approximation. We prepare time-symmetric initial data sets for two black holes (the so-called Brill-Lindquist initial data) and numerically evolve the spacetime in terms of a gauge-invariant formulation for the perturbation around the higher-dimensional Schwarzschild black holes. The waveform and radiated energy of gravitational waves emitted in the head-on collision are clarified. Also, the complex frequencies of fundamental quasinormal modes of higher-dimensional Schwarzschild black holes, which have not been accurately derived so far, are determined.

• Received 17 August 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.72.084020