843 research outputs found
Beyond the Bowen-York extrinsic curvature for spinning black holes
It is well-known that Bowen-York initial data contain spurious radiation.
Although this ``junk'' radiation has been seen to be small for non-spinning
black-hole binaries in circular orbit, its magnitude increases when the black
holes are given spin. It is possible to reduce the spurious radiation by
applying the puncture approach to multiple Kerr black holes, as we demonstrate
for examples of head-on collisions of equal-mass black-hole binaries.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, submitted to special "New Frontiers in Numerical
Relativity" issue of Classical and Quantum Gravit
A Simple Family of Analytical Trumpet Slices of the Schwarzschild Spacetime
We describe a simple family of analytical coordinate systems for the
Schwarzschild spacetime. The coordinates penetrate the horizon smoothly and are
spatially isotropic. Spatial slices of constant coordinate time feature a
trumpet geometry with an asymptotically cylindrical end inside the horizon at a
prescribed areal radius (with ) that serves as the free
parameter for the family. The slices also have an asymptotically flat end at
spatial infinity. In the limit the spatial slices lose their trumpet
geometry and become flat -- in this limit, our coordinates reduce to
Painlev\'e-Gullstrand coordinates.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure
Method to estimate ISCO and ring-down frequencies in binary systems and consequences for gravitational wave data analysis
Recent advances in the description of compact binary systems have produced
gravitational waveforms that include inspiral, merger and ring-down phases.
Comparing results from numerical simulations with those of post-Newtonian (PN),
and related, expansions has provided motivation for employing PN waveforms in
near merger epochs when searching for gravitational waves and has encouraged
the development of analytic fits to full numerical waveforms. The models and
simulations do not yet cover the full binary coalescence parameter space. For
these yet un-simulated regions, data analysts can still conduct separate
inspiral, merger and ring-down searches. Improved knowledge about the end of
the inspiral phase, the beginning of the merger, and the ring-down frequencies
could increase the efficiency of both coherent inspiral-merger-ring-down (IMR)
searches and searches over each phase separately. Insight can be gained for all
three cases through a recently presented theoretical calculation, which,
corroborated by the numerical results, provides an implicit formula for the
final spin of the merged black holes, accurate to within 10% over a large
parameter space. Knowledge of the final spin allows one to predict the end of
the inspiral phase and the quasinormal mode ring-down frequencies, and in turn
provides information about the bandwidth and duration of the merger. In this
work we will discuss a few of the implications of this calculation for data
analysis.Comment: Added references to section 3 14 pages 5 figures. Submitted to
Classical and Quantum Gravit
Complete phenomenological gravitational waveforms from spinning coalescing binaries
The quest for gravitational waves from coalescing binaries is customarily
performed by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration via matched filtering, which requires
a detailed knowledge of the signal. Complete analytical coalescence waveforms
are currently available only for the non-precessing binary systems. In this
paper we introduce complete phenomenological waveforms for the dominant
quadrupolar mode of generically spinning systems. These waveforms are
constructed by bridging the gap between the analytically known inspiral phase,
described by spin Taylor (T4) approximants in the restricted waveform
approximation, and the ring-down phase through a phenomenological intermediate
phase, calibrated by comparison with specific, numerically generated waveforms,
describing equal mass systems with dimension-less spin magnitudes equal to 0.6.
The overlap integral between numerical and phenomenological waveforms ranges
between 0.95 and 0.99.Comment: Proceeding for the GWDAW-14 conference. Added reference in v
Connecting Numerical Relativity and Data Analysis of Gravitational Wave Detectors
Gravitational waves deliver information in exquisite detail about
astrophysical phenomena, among them the collision of two black holes, a system
completely invisible to the eyes of electromagnetic telescopes. Models that
predict gravitational wave signals from likely sources are crucial for the
success of this endeavor. Modeling binary black hole sources of gravitational
radiation requires solving the Eintein equations of General Relativity using
powerful computer hardware and sophisticated numerical algorithms. This
proceeding presents where we are in understanding ground-based gravitational
waves resulting from the merger of black holes and the implications of these
sources for the advent of gravitational-wave astronomy.Comment: Appeared in the Proceedings of 2014 Sant Cugat Forum on Astrophysics.
Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, ed. C.Sopuerta (Berlin:
Springer-Verlag
Conformally flat black hole initial data, with one cylindrical end
We give a complete analytical proof of existence and uniqueness of
extreme-like black hole initial data for Einstein equations, which possess a
cilindrical end, analogous to extreme Kerr, extreme Reissner Nordstrom, and
extreme Bowen-York's initial data. This extends and refines a previous result
\cite{dain-gabach09} to a general case of conformally flat, maximal initial
data with angular momentum, linear momentum and matter.Comment: Minor changes and formula (21) revised according to the published
version in Class. Quantum Grav. (2010). Results unchange
Binary black hole merger in the extreme mass ratio limit
We discuss the transition from quasi-circular inspiral to plunge of a system
of two nonrotating black holes of masses and in the extreme mass
ratio limit . In the spirit of the Effective One Body
(EOB) approach to the general relativistic dynamics of binary systems, the
dynamics of the two black hole system is represented in terms of an effective
particle of mass moving in a (quasi-)Schwarzschild
background of mass and submitted to an
radiation reaction force defined by Pad\'e resumming high-order Post-Newtonian
results. We then complete this approach by numerically computing, \`a la
Regge-Wheeler-Zerilli, the gravitational radiation emitted by such a particle.
Several tests of the numerical procedure are presented. We focus on
gravitational waveforms and the related energy and angular momentum losses. We
view this work as a contribution to the matching between analytical and
numerical methods within an EOB-type framework.Comment: 14 pages, six figures. Revised version. To appear in the CQG special
issue based around New Frontiers in Numerical Relativity conference, Golm
(Germany), July 17-21 200
Reducing orbital eccentricity in binary black hole simulations
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 non-zero radial velocities to be specified in binary black
hole initial data. New low-eccentricity initial data are obtained by adjusting
the orbital frequency and radial velocities to minimize the orbital
eccentricity, and the resulting ( orbit) evolutions are compared with
those of quasi-circular initial data. Evolutions of the quasi-circular data
clearly show eccentric orbits, with eccentricity that decays over time. The
precise decay rate depends on the definition of eccentricity; if defined in
terms of variations in the orbital frequency, the decay rate agrees well with
the prediction of Peters (1964). The gravitational waveforms, which contain
cycles in the dominant l=m=2 mode, are largely unaffected by the
eccentricity of the quasi-circular initial data. The overlap between the
dominant mode in the quasi-circular evolution and the same mode in the
low-eccentricity evolution is about 0.99.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures; various minor clarifications; accepted to the
"New Frontiers" special issue of CQ
Phenomenological template family for black-hole coalescence waveforms
Recent progress in numerical relativity has enabled us to model the
non-perturbative merger phase of the binary black-hole coalescence problem.
Based on these results, we propose a phenomenological family of waveforms which
can model the inspiral, merger, and ring-down stages of black hole coalescence.
We also construct a template bank using this family of waveforms and discuss
its implementation in the search for signatures of gravitational waves produced
by black-hole coalescences in the data of ground-based interferometers. This
template bank might enable us to extend the present inspiral searches to
higher-mass binary black-hole systems, i.e., systems with total mass greater
than about 80 solar masses, thereby increasing the reach of the current
generation of ground-based detectors.Comment: Minor changes, Submitted to Class. Quantum Grav. (Proc. GWDAW11
Formulations of the 3+1 evolution equations in curvilinear coordinates
Following Brown, in this paper we give an overview of how to modify standard
hyperbolic formulations of the 3+1 evolution equations of General Relativity in
such a way that all auxiliary quantities are true tensors, thus allowing for
these formulations to be used with curvilinear sets of coordinates such as
spherical or cylindrical coordinates. After considering the general case for
both the Nagy-Ortiz-Reula (NOR) and the Baumgarte-Shapiro-Shibata-Nakamura
(BSSN) formulations, we specialize to the case of spherical symmetry and also
discuss the issue of regularity at the origin. Finally, we show some numerical
examples of the modified BSSN formulation at work in spherical symmetry.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure
- âŠ