Search results for "Numerical Relativity"
showing 10 items of 55 documents
Accurate evolutions of unequal-mass neutron-star binaries: properties of the torus and short GRB engines
2010
We present new results from accurate and fully general-relativistic simulations of the coalescence of unmagnetized binary neutron stars with various mass ratios. The evolution of the stars is followed through the inspiral phase, the merger and prompt collapse to a black hole, up until the appearance of a thick accretion disk, which is studied as it enters and remains in a regime of quasi-steady accretion. Although a simple ideal-fluid equation of state with \Gamma=2 is used, this work presents a systematic study within a fully general relativistic framework of the properties of the resulting black-hole--torus system produced by the merger of unequal-mass binaries. More specifically, we show…
Explosion and Final State of an Unstable Reissner-Nordström Black Hole
2016
A Reissner-Nordstr\"om black hole (BH) is superradiantly unstable against spherical perturbations of a charged scalar field, enclosed in a cavity, with frequency lower than a critical value. We use numerical relativity techniques to follow the development of this unstable system -- dubbed a charged BH bomb -- into the non-linear regime, solving the full Einstein--Maxwell--Klein-Gordon equations, in spherical symmetry. We show that: $i)$ the process stops before all the charge is extracted from the BH; $ii)$ the system settles down into a hairy BH: a charged horizon in equilibrium with a scalar field condensate, whose phase is oscillating at the (final) critical frequency. For low scalar fie…
Towards modelling the central engine of short GRBs
2011
Numerical relativity simulations of non-vacuum spacetimes have reached a status where a complete description of the inspiral, merger and post-merger stages of the late evolution of close binary neutron systems is possible. Determining the properties of the black-hole-torus system produced in such an event is a key aspect to understand the central engine of short-hard gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs). Of the many properties characterizing the torus, the total rest-mass is the most important one, since it is the torus' binding energy which can be tapped to extract the large amount of energy necessary to power the sGRB emission. In addition, the rest-mass density and angular momentum distribution in t…
3-D collapse of rotating stars to Kerr black holes
2005
We study gravitational collapse of uniformly rotating neutron stars to Kerr black holes, using a new three-dimensional, fully general relativistic hydrodynamics code, which uses high-resolution shock-capturing techniques and a conformal traceless formulation of the Einstein equations. We investigate the gravitational collapse by carefully studying not only the dynamics of the matter, but also that of the trapped surfaces, i.e. of both the apparent and event horizons formed during the collapse. The use of these surfaces, together with the dynamical horizon framework, allows for a precise measurement of the black-hole mass and spin. The ability to successfully perform these simulations for su…
Gravitational waves in dynamical spacetimes with matter content in the fully constrained formulation
2012
The Fully Constrained Formulation (FCF) of General Relativity is a novel framework introduced as an alternative to the hyperbolic formulations traditionally used in numerical relativity. The FCF equations form a hybrid elliptic-hyperbolic system of equations including explicitly the constraints. We present an implicit-explicit numerical algorithm to solve the hyperbolic part, whereas the elliptic sector shares the form and properties with the well known Conformally Flat Condition (CFC) approximation. We show the stability andconvergence properties of the numerical scheme with numerical simulations of vacuum solutions. We have performed the first numerical evolutions of the coupled system of…
Fully relativistic non-linear cosmological evolution in spherical symmetry using the BSSN formalism
2014
We present a fully relativistic numerical method for the study of cosmological problems using the Baumgarte-Shapiro-Shibata-Nakamura formalism on a dynamical Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker background. This has many potential applications including the study of the growth of structures beyond the linear regime. We present one such application by reproducing the Lema\^itre-Tolman-Bondi solution for the collapse of pressureless matter with arbitrary lapse function. The regular and smooth numerical solution at the center of coordinates proceeds in a natural way by relying on the Partially Implicit Runge-Kutta algorithm described in Montero and Cordero-Carri\'on [arXiv:1211.5930]. We gene…
Measuring the black hole spin direction in 3D Cartesian numerical relativity simulations
2015
We show that the so-called flat-space rotational Killing vector method for measuring the Cartesian components of a black hole spin can be derived from the surface integral of Weinberg's pseudotensor over the apparent horizon surface when using Gaussian normal coordinates in the integration. Moreover, the integration of the pseudotensor in this gauge yields the Komar angular momentum integral in a foliation adapted to the axisymmetry of the spacetime. As a result, the method does not explicitly depend on the evolved lapse $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ and shift ${\ensuremath{\beta}}^{i}$ on the respective time slice, as they are fixed to Gaussian normal coordinates while leaving the coordinate label…
Mathematical Issues in a Fully-Constrained Formulation of Einstein Equations
2008
Bonazzola, Gourgoulhon, Grandcl\'ement, and Novak [Phys. Rev. D {\bf 70}, 104007 (2004)] proposed a new formulation for 3+1 numerical relativity. Einstein equations result, according to that formalism, in a coupled elliptic-hyperbolic system. We have carried out a preliminary analysis of the mathematical structure of that system, in particular focusing on the equations governing the evolution for the deviation of a conformal metric from a flat fiducial one. The choice of a Dirac's gauge for the spatial coordinates guarantees the mathematical characterization of that system as a (strongly) hyperbolic system of conservation laws. In the presence of boundaries, this characterization also depen…
Fully covariant and conformal formulation of the Z4 system in a reference-metric approach: Comparison with the BSSN formulation in spherical symmetry
2014
We adopt a reference-metric approach to generalize a covariant and conformal version of the Z4 system of the Einstein equations. We refer to the resulting system as ``fully covariant and conformal", or fCCZ4 for short, since it is well suited for curvilinear as well as Cartesian coordinates. We implement this fCCZ4 formalism in spherical polar coordinates under the assumption of spherical symmetry using a partially-implicit Runge-Kutta (PIRK) method and show that our code can evolve both vacuum and non-vacuum spacetimes without encountering instabilities. Our method does not require regularization of the equations to handle coordinate singularities, nor does it depend on constraint-preservi…
Quasistationary solutions of self-gravitating scalar fields around collapsing stars
2015
Recent work has shown that scalar fields around black holes can form long-lived, quasistationary configurations surviving for cosmological time scales. Scalar fields thus cannot be discarded as viable candidates for dark matter halo models in galaxies around central supermassive black holes (SMBHs). One hypothesized formation scenario of most SMBHs at high redshift is the gravitational collapse of supermassive stars (SMSs) with masses of $\ensuremath{\sim}{10}^{5}\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{M}}_{\ensuremath{\bigodot}}$. Any such scalar field configurations must survive the gravitational collapse of a SMS in order to be a viable model of physical reality. To check for the postcollapse survival …