Over the Rainbow: Numerical Relativity beyond Scri+

This is a study of the behavior of wave equations in conformally compactified spacetimes suited to the use of computational boundaries beyond Scri+. There light cones may be adjusted for computational convenience and/or Scri+ may be approximated by a "proto-Scri" spacelike hypersurface just outside a de Sitter horizon. One expects a numerical implementation to excise the physically unnecessary universe somewhat beyond the outer horizon. As an entry level example I study forms of the Maxwell equations and causal relations for an outer boundary in that example.Comment: 5 pages, no figures; added acknowledgements and references in v

Spherical Harmonic Decomposition on a Cubic Grid

A method is described by which a function defined on a cubic grid (as from a finite difference solution of a partial differential equation) can be resolved into spherical harmonic components at some fixed radius. This has applications to the treatment of boundary conditions imposed at radii larger than the size of the grid, following Abrahams, Rezzola, Rupright et al.(gr-qc/9709082}. In the method described here, the interpolation of the grid data to the integration 2-sphere is combined in the same step as the integrations to extract the spherical harmonic amplitudes, which become sums over grid points. Coordinates adapted to the integration sphere are not needed.Comment: 5 pages, LaTeX uses cjour.cls (supplied

Taub-NUT space as a counterexample to almost anything Technical report no. 529

Taub-NUT space as countermeasure to almost anything - Einstein equation, classical mechanics, and differential equation

Integration over connections in the discretized gravitational functional integrals

The result of performing integrations over connection type variables in the path integral for the discrete field theory may be poorly defined in the case of non-compact gauge group with the Haar measure exponentially growing in some directions. This point is studied in the case of the discrete form of the first order formulation of the Einstein gravity theory. Here the result of interest can be defined as generalized function (of the rest of variables of the type of tetrad or elementary areas) i. e. a functional on a set of probe functions. To define this functional, we calculate its values on the products of components of the area tensors, the so-called moments. The resulting distribution (in fact, probability distribution) has singular ($\delta$-function-like) part with support in the nonphysical region of the complex plane of area tensors and regular part (usual function) which decays exponentially at large areas. As we discuss, this also provides suppression of large edge lengths which is important for internal consistency, if one asks whether gravity on short distances can be discrete. Some another features of the obtained probability distribution including occurrence of the local maxima at a number of the approximately equidistant values of area are also considered.Comment: 22 page

Quantum nature of black holes

I reconsider Hawking's analysis of the effects of gravitational collapse on quantum fields, taking into account interactions between the fields. The ultra-high energy vacuum fluctuations, which had been considered to be an awkward peripheral feature of the analysis, are shown to play a key role. By interactions, they can scatter particles to, or create pairs of particle at, ultra-high energies. The energies rapidly become so great that quantum gravity must play a dominant role. Thus the vicinities of black holes are essentially quantum-gravitational regimes.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. Honorable mention in the 2004 Gravity Research Foundation Essay Competitio

Exact Cosmological Solutions of Gravitational Theories

A global picture is drawn tying together most exact cosmological solutions of gravitational theories in four or more spacetime dimensions.Comment: 11 latex article style page