Related papers: Efficient simulations of high-spin black holes wit…
Numerical simulations of binary black holes are accompanied by an initial spurious burst of gravitational radiation (called `junk radiation') caused by a failure of the initial data to describe a snapshot of an inspiral that started at an…
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.,…
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…
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 results from a new code for binary black hole evolutions using the moving-puncture approach, implementing finite differences in generalised coordinates, and allowing the spacetime to be covered with multiple communicating…
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…
We present a new approach for setting initial Cauchy data for multiple black hole spacetimes. The method is based upon adopting an initially Kerr-Schild form of the metric. In the case of non-spinning holes, the constraint equations take a…
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…
Generalizing previous work we propose how to superpose spinning black holes in a Kerr-Schild initial slice. This superposition satisfies several physically meaningful limits, including the close and the far ones. Further we consider the…
We propose a new radial coordinate to write the Kerr metric in puncture form. Unlike the quasi-radial coordinate introduced previously, the horizon radius remains finite in our radial coordinate in the extreme Kerr limit a/M -> 1. This…
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…
We present here an alternative approach to data setting for spacetimes with multiple moving black holes generalizing the Kerr-Schild form for rotating or non-rotating single black holes to multiple moving holes. Because this scheme…
Superradiant scattering of linear spin $s=0,\pm 1,\pm 2$ fields on Kerr black hole background is investigated in the time domain by integrating numerically the homogeneous Teukolsky master equation. The applied numerical setup has already…
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…
The damped harmonic gauge is important for numerical relativity computations based on the generalized harmonic formulation of Einstein's equations, and is used to reduce coordinate distortions near binary black hole mergers. However,…
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…
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 formalism for constructing quasi-equilibrium binary black hole initial data suitable for numerical evolution. We construct quasi-equilibrium models by imposing an approximate helical Killing symmetry appropriate for…
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…
Reducing orbital eccentricity in numerical relativity simulations of binary black holes is essential for producing astrophysically relevant gravitational wave models, as many of these systems are expected to be near-circular in nature.…