Related papers: An efficient spectral interpolation routine for th…
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…
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 calculate puncture initial data, corresponding to single and binary black holes with linear momenta, which solve the constraint equations of D dimensional vacuum gravity. The data are generated by a modification of the pseudo-spectral…
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…
A new numerical method to construct binary black hole/neutron star initial data is presented. The method uses three spherical coordinate patches; Two of these are centered at the binary compact objects and cover a neighborhood of each…
Several improvements in numerical methods and gauge choice are presented that make it possible now to perform simulations of the merger and ringdown phases of "generic" binary black-hole evolutions using the pseudo-spectral evolution code…
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…
Binary black holes are the most abundant source of gravitational-wave observations. Gravitational-wave observatories in the next decade will require tremendous increases in the accuracy of numerical waveforms modeling binary black holes,…
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…
Detecting binary black holes in interferometer data requires an accurate knowledge of the orbital phase evolution of the system. From the point of view of data analysis one also needs fast algorithms to compute the templates that will…
To fully unlock the scientific potential of upcoming gravitational wave (GW) interferometers, numerical relativity (NR) simulation accuracy will need to be greatly enhanced. We present three infrastructure-agnostic improvements to the…
The most popular method to construct initial data for black-hole-binary simulations is the puncture method, in which compactified wormholes are given linear and angular momentum via the Bowen-York extrinsic curvature. When these data are…
We report on early results of a numerical and statistical study of binary black hole inspirals. The two black holes are evolved using post-Newtonian approximations starting with initially randomly distributed spin vectors. We characterize…
We present a multi-domain spectral method to compute initial data of binary systems in General Relativity. By utilizing adapted conformal coordinates, the vacuum region exterior to the gravitational sources is divided up into two subdomains…
At the beginning of binary black hole simulations, there is a pulse of spurious radiation (or junk radiation) resulting from the initial data not matching astrophysical quasi-equilibrium inspiral exactly. One traditionally waits for the…
We present simple procedures to construct quasi-circular initial data for numerical evolutions of binary black hole spacetimes. Our method consists of using Post-Newtonian theory in three ways: first to provide an initial guess for the…
We present a new iterative method to reduce eccentricity in black-hole-binary simulations. Given a good first estimate of low-eccentricity starting momenta, we evolve puncture initial data for ~4 orbits and construct improved initial…
The production of numerical relativity waveforms that describe quasicircular binary black hole mergers requires high-quality initial data, and an algorithm to iteratively reduce residual eccentricity. To date, these tools remain closed…
The Bethe-Salpeter formalism represents the most accurate method available nowadays for computing neutral excitation energies and optical spectra of crystalline systems from first principles. Bethe-Salpeter calculations yield very good…
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…