In numerical relativity, spacetimes involving compact strongly gravitating objects are constructed as numerical solutions of Einstein's equations. Success of such a process strongly depends on the availability of appropriate coordinates, which are typically constructed dynamically. A very robust coordinate choice is a so-called moving puncture gauge, commonly used for numerical simulations of black hole spacetimes. Nevertheless it is known to fail for evolving near-critical Brill wave data. We construct a new `quasi-maximal' slicing condition and demonstrate that it exhibits better behavior for such data. This condition is based on the 1+log slicing with an additional source term derived from maximal slicing. It is relatively simple to implement in existing moving puncture codes and computationally inexpensive. We also illustrate the properties of constructed spacetimes based on gauge-independent quantities in compactified spacetime diagrams. These invariants are also used to show how created black holes settle down to a Schwarzschild black hole.
We present a generalisation of the Brill-type proof of positivity of mass for axisymmetric initial data to initial data sets with black hole boundaries. The argument leads to a strictly positive lower bound for the mass of simply connected, connected axisymmetric black hole data sets in terms of the mass of a reference Schwarzschild metric.
This thesis is concerned with formulations of the Einstein equations in axisymmetric spacetimes which are suitable for numerical evolutions. We develop two evolution systems based on the (2+1)+1 formalism. The first is a (partially) constrained scheme with elliptic gauge conditions arising from maximal slicing and conformal flatness. The second is a strongly hyperbolic first-order formulation obtained by combining the (2+1)+1 formalism with the Z4 formalism. A careful study of the behaviour of regular axisymmetric tensor fields enables us to cast the equations in a form that is well-behaved on…
We construct numerically time-symmetric initial data that are Schwarzschildean at spatial infinity and Brill-Lindquist in the interior. The transition between these two data sets takes place along a finite gluing region equipped with an axisymmetric Brill wave metric. The construction is based on an application of Corvino's gluing method using Brill waves due to Giulini and Holzegel. Here, we use a gluing function that includes a simple angular dependence. We also investigate the dependence of the ADM mass of our construction on the details of the gluing procedure.
Numerical results, based on a lattice method for computational general relativity, will be presented for Cauchy evolution of initial data for the Brill, Teukolsky and polarised Gowdy space-times. The simple objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the lattice method can, at least for these space-times, match results obtained from contemporary methods. Some of the issues addressed in this paper include the handling of axisymmetric instabilities (in the Brill space-time) and an implementation of a Sommerfeld radiation condition for the Brill and Teukolsky space-times. It will be shown that…
It is well known that quasi-local black hole horizons depend on the choice of a time coordinate in a spacetime. This has implications for notions such as the surface of the black hole and also on quasi-local physical quantities such as horizon measures of mass and angular momentum. In this paper, we compare different horizons on non-spherically symmetric slicings of Vaidya spacetimes. The spacetimes we investigate include both accreting and evaporating black holes. For some simple choices of the Vaidya mass function function corresponding to collapse of a hollow shell, we compare the area for …
The pseudospectral code bamps is used to evolve axisymmetric gravitational waves. We consider a one-parameter family of Brill wave initial data, taking the seed function and strength parameter of Holz et. al. A careful comparison is made to earlier work. Our results are mostly in agreement with the literature, but we do find that some amplitudes reported elsewhere as subcritical evolve to form apparent horizons. Related to this point we find that by altering the slicing condition, the position of the peak of the Kretschmann scalar in these supercritical data can be controlled so that it appear…
As a first application of the new adaptive mesh functionality of the the pseudospectral numerical relativity code bamps, we evolve twist-free, axisymmetric gravitational waves close to the threshold of collapse. We consider six different one-parameter families of Brill wave initial data; two centered and four off-centered families. Of these the latter have not been treated before. Within each family we tune the parameter towards the threshold of black hole formation. The results for centered data agree with earlier work. Our key results are first, that close to the threshold of collapse the gl…
We show that extreme Myers-Perry initial data realize the unique absolute minimum of the total mass in a physically relevant (Brill) class of maximal, asymptotically flat, bi-axisymmetric initial data for the Einstein equations with fixed angular momenta. As a consequence, we prove the relevant mass-angular momentum inequality in this setting for 5-dimensional spacetimes. That is, all data in this class satisfy the inequality $m^3\geq \frac{27π}{32}\left(|\mathcal{J}_1|+|\mathcal{J}_2|\right)^2$, where $m$ and $\mathcal{J}_i$, $i=1,2$ are the total mass and angular momenta of the spacetime. Mo…
We present a new pseudospectral code, bamps, for numerical relativity written with the evolution of collapsing gravitational waves in mind. We employ the first order generalized harmonic gauge formulation. The relevant theory is reviewed and the numerical method is critically examined and specialized for the task at hand. In particular we investigate formulation parameters, gauge and constraint preserving boundary conditions well-suited to non-vanishing gauge source functions. Different types of axisymmetric twist-free moment of time symmetry gravitational wave initial data are discussed. A tr…
The development of hyperbolic formulations of Einstein's equations has revolutionized our ability to perform long-time, stable, accurate numerical simulations of strong field gravitational phenomena. However, hyperbolic methods have seen relatively little application in one area of interest, type II critical collapse, where the challenges for a numerical code are particularly severe. Using the critical collapse of a massless scalar field in spherical symmetry as a test case, we study a generalization of the Baumgarte-Shapiro-Shibata-Nakamura (BSSN) formulation due to Brown that is suited for u…
