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This manuscript is a lightly reformatted version of my 2017 PhD thesis. I am posting it on arXiv at the request of my advisor, Sergiu Klainerman, who noted that it has been useful to some students. The content largely reflects the thesis in…
The most general bound binary black hole (BBH) system has an eccentric orbit and precessing spins. The detection of such a system with significant eccentricity close to the merger would be a clear signature of dynamical formation. In order…
We compute the gravitational radiation generated in the evolution of a family of close binary black hole configurations, using a combination of numerical and perturbative approximation methods. We evolve the binaries with spins, $s$,…
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 availability of accurate numerical waveforms is an important requirement for the creation and calibration of reliable waveform models for gravitational wave astrophysics. For black hole-neutron star binaries, very few accurate waveforms…
We compute the gravitational waveform emitted during the transition from quasi-spherical inspiral to plunge, merger and ringdown for a system of two black holes in the extreme mass ratio limit, where the primary is spinning and the…
Solving the 4-d Einstein equations as evolution in time requires solving equations of two types: the four elliptic initial data (constraint) equations, followed by the six second order evolution equations. Analytically the constraint…
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…
Tidal coupling between members of a compact binary system can have an interesting and important influence on that binary's dynamical inspiral. Tidal coupling also distorts the binary's members, changing them (at lowest order) from spheres…
We present the first results from a new method for computing spacetimes representing corotating binary black holes in circular orbits. The method is based on the assumption of exact equilibrium. It uses the standard 3+1 decomposition of…
We present analytic calculations of gravitational waves from a particle orbiting a black hole. We first review the Teukolsky formalism for dealing with the gravitational perturbation of a black hole. Then we develop a systematic method to…
In calculations of the inspiral of binary black holes an intermediate approximation is needed that can bridge the post-Newtonian methods of the early inspiral and the numerical relativity computations of the final plunge. We describe here…
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 uncover late-time gravitational-wave tails in fully nonlinear 3+1 dimensional numerical relativity simulations of merging black holes, using the highly accurate SpEC code. We achieve this result by exploiting the strong magnification of…
We present a detailed analysis of binary black hole evolutions in the last orbit, and demonstrate consistent and convergent results for the trajectories of the individual bodies. The gauge choice can significantly affect the overall…
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.…
Numerical relativity simulations of merging black holes provide the most accurate description of the binary dynamics and the emitted gravitational wave signal. However, practical considerations such as imperfect initial data and initial…
Simulations of binary black hole systems using the Spectral Einstein Code (SpEC) are done on a computational domain that excises the regions inside the black holes. It is imperative that the excision boundaries are outflow boundaries with…
Tidal torques acting on a gaseous accretion disk around a binary black hole can create a gap in the disk near the orbital radius. At late times, when the binary inspiral timescale due to gravitational wave emission becomes shorter than the…
It is now possible to compute linear in mass-ratio terms in the post-Newtonian (PN) expansion for compact binaries to very high orders using black hole perturbation theory applied to various invariants. For instance, a computation of the…