Related papers: Binary black hole initial data from matched asympt…
Black hole binaries on non-eccentric orbits form an important subclass of gravitational wave sources, but it is a non-trivial issue to construct numerical initial data with minimal initial eccentricity for numerical simulations. We compute…
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…
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 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 perform several black-hole binary evolutions using fully nonlinear numerical relativity techniques at separations large enough that low-order post-Newtonian expansions are expected to be accurate. As a case study, we evolve an equal-mass…
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…
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…
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…
We discuss the initial value problem of general relativity in its recently unified Lagrangian and Hamiltonian pictures and present a multi-domain pseudo-spectral collocation method to solve the resulting coupled nonlinear partial…
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 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…
We explore how a recently developed analytical black-hole binary spacetime can be extended using numerical simulations to go beyond the slow-inspiral phase. The analytic spacetime solves the Einstein field equations approximately, with the…
In Kelly et al. [Phys. Rev. D, 76:024008, 2007], we presented new binary black-hole initial data adapted to puncture evolutions in numerical relativity. This data satisfies the constraint equations to 2.5 post-Newtonian order, and contains…
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…
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 class of nonstationary spacetimes is obtained by means of a conformal transformation of the Schwarzschild metric, where the conformal factor $a(t)$ is an arbitrary function of the time coordinate only. We investigate several situations…
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…
We perform a statistical analysis of the binary black hole problem in the post-Newtonian approximation by systematically sampling and evolving the parameter space of initial configurations for quasi-circular inspirals. Through a principal…
Numerical relativity, applied to collisions of black holes, starts with initial data for black holes already in each other's strong field. The initial hypersurface data typically used for computation is based on mathematical simplifying…
We present an algorithm for calculating the complete data on an event horizon which constitute the necessary input for characteristic evolution of the exterior spacetime. We apply this algorithm to study the intrinsic and extrinsic geometry…