We study zoom-whirl behaviour of equal mass, non-spinning black hole binaries
in full general relativity. The magnitude of the linear momentum of the initial
data is fixed to that of a quasi-circular orbit, and its direction is varied.
We find a global maximum in radiated energy for a configuration which completes
roughly one orbit. The radiated energy in this case exceeds the value of a
quasi-circular binary with the same momentum by 15%. The direction parameter
only requires minor tuning for the localization of the maximum. There is
non-trivial dependence of the energy radiated on eccentricity (several local
maxima and minima). Correlations with orbital dynamics shortly before merger
are discussed. While being strongly gauge dependent, these findings are
intuitive from a physical point of view and support basic ideas about the
efficiency of gravitational radiation from a binary system.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, Amaldi8 conference proceedings as publishe
