Related papers: Simulations of Binary Black Hole Mergers Using Spe…
Astrophysically realistic black holes may have spins that are nearly extremal (i.e., close to 1 in dimensionless units). Numerical simulations of binary black holes are important tools both for calibrating analytical templates for…
Black hole spectroscopy is the proposal to observe multiple quasinormal modes in the ringdown of a binary black hole merger. In addition to the fundamental quadrupolar mode, overtones and higher harmonics may be present and detectable in…
Errors due to imperfect boundary conditions in numerical relativity simulations of binary black holes can produce unphysical reflections of gravitational waves which compromise the accuracy of waveform predictions, especially for…
Optimal extraction of information from gravitational-wave observations of binary black-hole coalescences requires detailed knowledge of the waveforms. Current approaches for representing waveform information are based on spin-weighted…
Gravitational waves from compact binary mergers provide a direct measurement of luminosity distance, which, in combination with redshift information, serves as a cosmological probe. In order to statistically infer merger redshifts, the…
In a recent paper arXiv:0709.0299, we introduced a spin expansion that provides a simple yet powerful way to understand aspects of binary black hole (BBH) merger. This approach relies on the symmetry properties of initial and final…
We present a semi-analytical binary black hole (BBH) metric approximation that models the entire evolution of the system from inspiral to merger. The metric is constructed as a boosted Kerr-Schild superposition following post-Newtonian (PN)…
The ringdown phase of a binary black-hole merger encodes key information about the remnant properties and provides a direct probe of the strong-field regime of General Relativity. While quasi-normal mode frequencies and damping times are…
We present results obtained by scattering a scalar field off the curved background of a coalescing binary black hole system. A massless scalar field is evolved on a set of fixed backgrounds, each provided by a spatial hypersurface generated…
Testing general relativity in the non-linear, dynamical, strong-field regime of gravity is one of the major goals of gravitational wave astrophysics. Performing precision tests of general relativity (GR) requires numerical inspiral, merger,…
We describe early success in the evolution of binary black hole spacetimes with a numerical code based on a generalization of harmonic coordinates. Indications are that with sufficient resolution this scheme is capable of evolving binary…
A numerical solution scheme for the Einstein field equations based on generalized harmonic coordinates is described, focusing on details not provided before in the literature and that are of particular relevance to the binary black hole…
We present long term evolutions of a single black hole of mass $M$ with the BSSN system using pseudospectral methods. For our simulations we use the SGRID code where the BSSN system is implemented in its standard second order in space form.…
The post-merger signal in binary black hole merger is described by linear, black-hole perturbation theory. Historically, this has been modeled using the dominant positive-frequency (corotating) fundamental mode. Recently, there has been a…
Gravitational waves from binary black hole mergers provide a glimpse of gravitational dynamics in its most extreme observable regime, potentially enabling precision tests of general relativity (GR) and of the Kerr description of black…
This a particularly exciting time for gravitational wave physics. Ground-based gravitational wave detectors are now operating at a sensitivity such that gravitational radiation may soon be directly detected, and recently several groups have…
The interaction of binary black hole mergers with their environments can be studied using numerical relativity simulations. These start only a short finite time before merger, at which point appropriate initial conditions must be imposed. A…
We have performed an extensive numerical study of coalescing black-hole binaries to understand the gravitational-wave spectrum of quasi-normal modes excited in the merged black hole. Remarkably, we find that the masses and spins of the…
We present the results of 14 simulations of nonspinning black hole binaries with mass ratios $q=m_1/m_2$ in the range $1/100\leq q\leq1$. For each of these simulations we perform three runs at increasing resolution to assess the finite…
We describe recent numerical simulations of the merger of a class of equal mass, non-spinning, eccentric binary black hole systems in general relativity. We show that with appropriate fine-tuning of the initial conditions to a region of…