Falloff of the Weyl Scalars in Numerical Relativity Binary Black Hole Spacetimes

	Special Guest Lectures
	Falloff of the Weyl Scalars in Numerical Relativity Binary Black Hole Spacetimes
	Ian Hinder, Albert Einstein Institute, Germany

	Johnston Hall 338 November 03, 2011 - 02:00 pm
Abstract: The extraction of gravitational waves from numerical relativity (NR) simulations usually relies crucially on the computation of the Weyl scalar Psi_4. Psi_4 can be interpreted as gravitational radiation in part due to the fact that of all the Weyl curvature scalars Psi_0 to Psi_4, Psi_4 is the only one that has a nonzero flux at infinity due to its 1/r falloff. This is a result of the "peeling theorem", according to which the remaining scalars fall off faster than 1/r assuming certain conditions are met. There have recently been questions concerning the extent to which these conditions are met when the Weyl scalars are computed in compact binary NR simulations. We verify that, for a binary black hole simulation, the Weyl scalars obey the peeling theorem to within numerical error.

Speaker's Bio: Ian Hinder is a senior group member of the numerical relativity group at the Albert Einstein Institute (Max-Planck-Institute) in Germany. He is an expert in binary black hole simulations, automated code generation, as well as formulations, well-posedness and numerical stability for finite difference approximations of the Einstein equations.

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