Related papers: Binary black hole evolutions of approximate punctu…
Standard puncture initial data have been widely used for numerical binary black hole evolutions despite their shortcomings, most notably the inherent lack of gravitational radiation at the initial time that is later followed by a burst of…
We present approximate analytical solutions to the Hamiltonian and momentum constraint equations, corresponding to systems composed of two black holes with arbitrary linear and angular momentum. The analytical nature of these initial data…
We construct approximate analytical solutions to the constraint equations of general relativity for binary black holes of arbitrary mass ratio in quasicircular orbit. We adopt the puncture method to solve the constraint equations in the…
We solve the Hamiltonian and momentum constraints of general relativity for two black holes with nearly extremal spins and relativistic boosts in the puncture formalism. We use a non-conformally-flat ansatz with an attenuated superposition…
Traditional black-hole binary puncture initial data is conformally flat. This unphysical assumption is coupled with a lack of radiation signature from the binary's past life. As a result, waveforms extracted from evolutions of this data…
Construction of binary black hole initial data is a prerequisite for numerical evolutions of binary black holes. This paper reports improvements to the binary black hole initial data solver in the Spectral Einstein Code, to allow robust…
We present improved post-Newtonian-inspired initial data for non-spinning black-hole binaries, suitable for numerical evolution with punctures. We revisit the work of Tichy et al. [W. Tichy, B. Bruegmann, M. Campanelli, and P. Diener, Phys.…
We present improvements to construction of binary black hole initial data used in SpEC (the Spectral Einstein Code). We introduce new boundary conditions for the extended conformal thin sandwich elliptic equations that enforce the excision…
We perform a statistical analysis of the binary black hole problem in the post-Newtonian approximation by systematically sampling and evolving the parameter space of initial configurations for quasi-circular inspirals. Through a principal…
We follow the inspiral and merger of equal-mass black holes (BHs) by the moving puncture technique and demonstrate that both the exterior solution and the asymptotic gravitational waveforms are unchanged when the initial interior solution…
We calculate puncture initial data corresponding to both single and binary black hole solutions of the constraint equations by means of a pseudo-spectral method applied in a single spatial domain. Introducing appropriate coordinates, these…
In Kelly et al. [Phys. Rev. D, 76:024008, 2007], we presented new binary black-hole initial data adapted to puncture evolutions in numerical relativity. This data satisfies the constraint equations to 2.5 post-Newtonian order, and contains…
We present approximate analytical solutions to the Hamiltonian and momentum constraint equations, corresponding to systems composed of two black holes with arbitrary linear and angular momentum. The analytical nature of these initial data…
The starting point of any general relativistic numerical simulation is a solution of the Hamiltonian and momentum constraints that (ideally) represents an astrophysically realistic scenario. We present a new method to produce initial data…
We compare the results of constructing binary black hole initial data with three different decompositions of the constraint equations of general relativity. For each decomposition we compute the initial data using a superposition of two…
We describe a method for initializing characteristic evolutions of the Einstein equations using a linearized solution corresponding to purely outgoing radiation. This allows for a more consistent application of the characteristic (null…
There is a significant possibility that astrophysical black holes with nearly-extremal spins exist. Numerical simulations of such systems require suitable initial data. In this paper, we examine three methods of constructing…
We present a new numerical code developed for the evolution of binary black-hole spacetimes using different initial data and evolution techniques. The code is demonstrated to produce state-of-the-art simulations of orbiting and inspiralling…
Initial data for numerical evolutions of binary-black holes have been dominated by "conformally flat" (CF) data (i.e., initial data where the conformal background metric is chosen to be flat) because they are easy to construct. However, CF…
With the goal of taking a step toward the construction of astrophysically realistic initial data for numerical simulations of black holes, we for the first time derive a family of fully general relativistic initial data based on…