Binary black hole mergers are the strongest expected producers of graviational
radiation in the universe. Ground-based and proposed space-based
gravitational wave detectors will benefit from simulations modeling the mergers
and extracting the resulting gravitational waveforms. Producing templates
of waveforms will both aid the likelihood of detection and the estimation of
parameters (mass ratio, spin, etc.). openGR is modular, open framework development
to carry out simulations of binary black hole mergers. While designed
with the two-body problem in mind, openGR will evolve most general
spacetimes.
This work overviews the capabilities of openGR and the corresponding physics involved. openGR supports both excision and puncture methods.
When excising the black hole, to date we have used only the weakly hyperbolic
ADM formulation of the Einstein’s equations. As expected from a weakly hyperbolic
system, instabilites arise and crash the code when simulating even just
a single boosted black hole in Kerr-Schild coordinates. In contrast, successful
mergers of two black holes have been achieved using the puncture method. We
demonstrate such a simulation in Ch 8. In this case, we make use of a BSSN
formulation of Einstein’s equations (a strongly hyperbolic system). / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/ETD-UT-2009-12-705 |
| Date | 11 February 2011 |
| Creators | Walter, Paul Joseph, 1978- |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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