Session Q20 - Gravitational Radiation - Theory and Numerical Relativity.
MIXED session, Monday afternoon, May 01
102A, LBCC
One of the great challenges in gravitational physics is to simulate the collision of two black holes in order to study the resulting gravitational radiation. The Agave collaboration has successfully collided two spinning black holes in a grazing merger. The eventual goal of this work is to simulate the orbit, merger and ringdown stages of an astrophysical binary black hole system. The success of the grazing collision has proven to be strongly dependent on predicting the dynamics of the apparent horizons during the evolution. This is due to the fact that the region inside the apparent horizon containing the singularity is removed from the computational domain. Once the black holes have merged, one is left with a single black hole horizon. The spacetime is of a highly distorted black hole. We present results from simulations of the merged to ringdown stage in the life of a binary black hole collision. We show not only how crucial a role the dynamics of the apparent horizon plays in extending the lifetime of the simulation towards ringdown, but also the vital role the appropriate prescription of gauge conditions plays.