263 research outputs found
Comparing Criteria for Circular Orbits in General Relativity
We study a simple analytic solution to Einstein's field equations describing
a thin spherical shell consisting of collisionless particles in circular orbit.
We then apply two independent criteria for the identification of circular
orbits, which have recently been used in the numerical construction of binary
black hole solutions, and find that both yield equivalent results. Our
calculation illustrates these two criteria in a particularly transparent
framework and provides further evidence that the deviations found in those
numerical binary black hole solutions are not caused by the different criteria
for circular orbits.Comment: 4 pages; to appear in PRD as a Brief Report; added and corrected
reference
Corotating and irrotational binary black holes in quasi-circular orbits
A complete formalism for constructing initial data representing black-hole
binaries in quasi-equilibrium is developed. Radiation reaction prohibits, in
general, true equilibrium binary configurations. However, when the timescale
for orbital decay is much longer than the orbital period, a binary can be
considered to be in quasi-equilibrium. If each black hole is assumed to be in
quasi-equilibrium, then a complete set of boundary conditions for all initial
data variables can be developed. These boundary conditions are applied on the
apparent horizon of each black hole, and in fact force a specified surface to
be an apparent horizon. A global assumption of quasi-equilibrium is also used
to fix some of the freely specifiable pieces of the initial data and to
uniquely fix the asymptotic boundary conditions. This formalism should allow
for the construction of completely general quasi-equilibrium black hole binary
initial data.Comment: 13 pages, no figures, revtex4; Content changed slightly to reflect
fact that regularized shift solutions do satisfy the isometry boundary
condition
Toward stable 3D numerical evolutions of black-hole spacetimes
Three dimensional (3D) numerical evolutions of static black holes with
excision are presented. These evolutions extend to about 8000M, where M is the
mass of the black hole. This degree of stability is achieved by using
growth-rate estimates to guide the fine tuning of the parameters in a
multi-parameter family of symmetric hyperbolic representations of the Einstein
evolution equations. These evolutions were performed using a fixed gauge in
order to separate the intrinsic stability of the evolution equations from the
effects of stability-enhancing gauge choices.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev. D. Minor additions to
text for clarification. Added short paragraph about inner boundary dependenc
Gauge conditions for binary black hole puncture data based on an approximate helical Killing vector
We show that puncture data for quasicircular binary black hole orbits allow a
special gauge choice that realizes some of the necessary conditions for the
existence of an approximate helical Killing vector field. Introducing free
parameters for the lapse at the punctures we can satisfy the condition that the
Komar and ADM mass agree at spatial infinity. Several other conditions for an
approximate Killing vector are then automatically satisfied, and the 3-metric
evolves on a timescale smaller than the orbital timescale. The time derivative
of the extrinsic curvature however remains significant. Nevertheless,
quasicircular puncture data are not as far from possessing a helical Killing
vector as one might have expected.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 2 table
A model problem for conformal parameterizations of the Einstein constraint equations
We investigate the possibility that the conformal and conformal thin sandwich
(CTS) methods can be used to parameterize the set of solutions of the vacuum
Einstein constraint equations. To this end we develop a model problem obtained
by taking the quotient of certain symmetric data on conformally flat tori.
Specializing the model problem to a three-parameter family of conformal data we
observe a number of new phenomena for the conformal and CTS methods. Within
this family, we obtain a general existence theorem so long as the mean
curvature does not change sign. When the mean curvature changes sign, we find
that for certain data solutions exist if and only if the transverse-traceless
tensor is sufficiently small. When such solutions exist, there are generically
more than one. Moreover, the theory for mean curvatures changing sign is shown
to be extremely sensitive with respect to the value of a coupling constant in
the Einstein constraint equations.Comment: 40 pages, 4 figure
Improved numerical stability of stationary black hole evolution calculations
We experiment with modifications of the BSSN form of the Einstein field
equations (a reformulation of the ADM equations) and demonstrate how these
modifications affect the stability of numerical black hole evolution
calculations. We use excision to evolve both non-rotating and rotating
Kerr-Schild black holes in octant and equatorial symmetry, and without any
symmetry assumptions, and obtain accurate and stable simulations for specific
angular momenta J/M of up to about 0.9M.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, 1 typo in Eq. (20) correcte
Comparing initial-data sets for binary black holes
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 Kerr-Schild black holes to fix the freely specifiable
data. We find that these initial-data sets differ significantly, with the ADM
energy varying by as much as 5% of the total mass. We find that all
initial-data sets currently used for evolutions might contain unphysical
gravitational radiation of the order of several percent of the total mass. This
is comparable to the amount of gravitational-wave energy observed during the
evolved collision. More astrophysically realistic initial data will require
more careful choices of the freely specifiable data and boundary conditions for
both the metric and extrinsic curvature. However, we find that the choice of
extrinsic curvature affects the resulting data sets more strongly than the
choice of conformal metric.Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
A skeleton approximate solution of the Einstein field equations for multiple black-hole systems
An approximate analytical and non-linear solution of the Einstein field
equations is derived for a system of multiple non-rotating black holes. The
associated space-time has the same asymptotic structure as the Brill-Lindquist
initial data solution for multiple black holes. The system admits an
Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) Hamiltonian that can particularly evolve the
Brill-Lindquist solution over finite time intervals. The gravitational field of
this model may properly be referred to as a skeleton approximate solution of
the Einstein field equations. The approximation is based on a conformally flat
truncation, which excludes gravitational radiation, as well as a removal of
some additional gravitational field energy. After these two simplifications,
only source terms proportional to Dirac delta distributions remain in the
constraint equations. The skeleton Hamiltonian is exact in the test-body limit,
it leads to the Einsteinian dynamics up to the first post-Newtonian
approximation, and in the time-symmetric limit it gives the energy of the
Brill-Lindquist solution exactly. The skeleton model for binary systems may be
regarded as a kind of analytical counterpart to the numerical treatment of
orbiting Misner-Lindquist binary black holes proposed by Gourgoulhon,
Grandclement, and Bonazzola, even if they actually treat the corotating case.
Along circular orbits, the two-black-hole skeleton solution is quasi-stationary
and it fulfills the important property of equality of Komar and ADM masses.
Explicit calculations for the determination of the last stable circular orbit
of the binary system are performed up to the tenth post-Newtonian order within
the skeleton model.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Phys. Rev. D, 3 references added,
minor correction
The Lazarus project: A pragmatic approach to binary black hole evolutions
We present a detailed description of techniques developed to combine 3D
numerical simulations and, subsequently, a single black hole close-limit
approximation. This method has made it possible to compute the first complete
waveforms covering the post-orbital dynamics of a binary black hole system with
the numerical simulation covering the essential non-linear interaction before
the close limit becomes applicable for the late time dynamics. To determine
when close-limit perturbation theory is applicable we apply a combination of
invariant a priori estimates and a posteriori consistency checks of the
robustness of our results against exchange of linear and non-linear treatments
near the interface. Once the numerically modeled binary system reaches a regime
that can be treated as perturbations of the Kerr spacetime, we must
approximately relate the numerical coordinates to the perturbative background
coordinates. We also perform a rotation of a numerically defined tetrad to
asymptotically reproduce the tetrad required in the perturbative treatment. We
can then produce numerical Cauchy data for the close-limit evolution in the
form of the Weyl scalar and its time derivative
with both objects being first order coordinate and tetrad invariant. The
Teukolsky equation in Boyer-Lindquist coordinates is adopted to further
continue the evolution. To illustrate the application of these techniques we
evolve a single Kerr hole and compute the spurious radiation as a measure of
the error of the whole procedure. We also briefly discuss the extension of the
project to make use of improved full numerical evolutions and outline the
approach to a full understanding of astrophysical black hole binary systems
which we can now pursue.Comment: New typos found in the version appeared in PRD. (Mostly found and
collected by Bernard Kelly
Conformal-thin-sandwich initial data for a single boosted or spinning black hole puncture
Sequences of initial-data sets representing binary black holes in
quasi-circular orbits have been used to calculate what may be interpreted as
the innermost stable circular orbit. These sequences have been computed with
two approaches. One method is based on the traditional
conformal-transverse-traceless decomposition and locates quasi-circular orbits
from the turning points in an effective potential. The second method uses a
conformal-thin-sandwich decomposition and determines quasi-circular orbits by
requiring the existence of an approximate helical Killing vector. Although the
parameters defining the innermost stable circular orbit obtained from these two
methods differ significantly, both approaches yield approximately the same
initial data, as the separation of the binary system increases. To help
understanding this agreement between data sets, we consider the case of initial
data representing a single boosted or spinning black hole puncture of the
Bowen-York type and show that the conformal-transverse-traceless and
conformal-thin-sandwich methods yield identical data, both satisfying the
conditions for the existence of an approximate Killing vector.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figure
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