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A numerical approach to binary black hole coalescence

Lee Samuel Finn
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Abstract

The nature of binary black hole coalescence is the final, uncharted frontier of the relativistic Kepler problem. In the United States, binary black hole coalescence has been identified as a computational ``Grand Challenge'' whose solution is the object of a coordinated effort, just reaching its half-way point, by more than two-score researchers at nearly a dozen institutions. In this report I highlight what I see as the most serious problems standing between us and a general computational solution to the problem of binary black hole coalescence: * the computational burden associated of the problem based on reasonable extrapolations of present-day computing algorithms and near-term hardware developments; * some of the computational issues associated with those estimates, and how, through the use of different or more sophisticated computational algorithms we might reduce the expected burden; and * some of the physical problems associated with the development of a numerical solution of the field equations for a binary black hole system, with particular attention to work going on in, or in association with, the Grand Challenge.

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Lee Samuel Finn. 1996-03-05. A numerical approach to binary black hole coalescence. https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9603004

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