Related papers: Are different approaches to constructing initial d…
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…
The standard approach to initial data for both analytic and numerical computations of black hole collisions has been to use conformally-flat initial geometry. Among other advantages, this choice allows the simple superposition of holes with…
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…
(Abridged) By asymptotically matching a post-Newtonian (PN) metric to two tidally perturbed Schwarzschild metrics, we generate approximate initial data (in the form of a 4-metric) for a nonspinning black hole binary in a circular orbit. We…
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…
At early times in numerical evolutions of binary black holes, current simulations contain an initial burst of spurious gravitational radiation (also called "junk radiation") which is not astrophysically realistic. The spurious radiation is…
In numerical evolutions of binary black holes (BBH) it is desirable to easily control the orbital eccentricity of the BBH, and the number of orbits completed by the binary through merger. This paper presents fitting formulae that allow to…
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…
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…
We present a method to construct conformally curved initial data for charged black hole binaries with spin on arbitrary orbits. We generalize the superposed Kerr-Schild, extended conformal thin sandwich construction from [Lovelace et al.,…
Approximate solutions to the Einstein field equations are a valuable tool to investigate gravitational phenomena. An important aspect of any approximation is to investigate and quantify its regime of validity. We present a study that…
Binary black hole simulations starting from quasi-circular (i.e., zero radial velocity) initial data have orbits with small but non-zero orbital eccentricities. In this paper the quasi-equilibrium initial-data method is extended to allow…
The construction of initial data for black-hole binaries usually involves the choice of free parameters that define the spins of the black holes and essentially the eccentricity of the orbit. Such parameters must be chosen carefully to…
The construction of initial-data sets representing binary black-hole configurations in quasi-circular orbits is studied in the context of the conformal-imaging formalism. An effective-potential approach for locating quasi-circular orbits is…
We present a new numerical scheme to solve the initial value problem for black hole-neutron star binaries. This method takes advantage of the flexibility and fast convergence of a multidomain spectral representation of the initial data to…
Initial data for evolving black-hole binaries can be constructed via many techniques, and can represent a wide range of physical scenarios. However, because of the way that different schemes parameterize the physical aspects of a…
A shortcoming of current binary black-hole initial data is the generation of spurious gravitational radiation, so-called junk radiation, when they are evolved. This problem is a consequence of an oversimplified modeling of the binary's…
We present an approximate metric for a binary black hole spacetime to construct initial data for numerical relativity. This metric is obtained by asymptotically matching a post-Newtonian metric for a binary system to a perturbed…
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…
Sequences of initial-data sets representing binary black holes in quasi-circular orbits have been used to calculate what may be interpreted as the innermost stable circular orbit. These sequences have been computed with two approaches. One…