A multi-domain hybrid method for head-on collision of black holes in particle limit

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hybrid spectral-finite difference method for solving the Zerilli equation in black hole head-on collisions, improving accuracy and computational efficiency in modeling gravitational waveforms.

Contribution

The paper develops a multi-domain hybrid numerical approach combining spectral and finite-difference methods, with stable interface conditions, for accurate simulation of black hole collisions.

Findings

Accurately reproduces quasi-normal modes and power-law decay.

Reduces computational costs significantly.

Power-law decay less sensitive to source shape than expected.

Abstract

A hybrid method is developed based on the spectral and finite-difference methods for solving the inhomogeneous Zerilli equation in time-domain. The developed hybrid method decomposes the domain into the spectral and finite-difference domains. The singular source term is located in the spectral domain while the solution in the region without the singular term is approximated by the higher-order finite-difference method. The spectral domain is also split into multi-domains and the finite-difference domain is placed as the boundary domain. Due to the global nature of the spectral method, a multi-domain method composed of the spectral domains only does not yield the proper power-law decay unless the range of the computational domain is large. The finite-difference domain helps reduce boundary effects due to the truncation of the computational domain. The multi-domain approach with the finite-difference boundary domain method reduces the computational costs significantly and also yields the proper power-law decay. Stable and accurate interface conditions between the finite-difference and spectral domains and the spectral and spectral domains are derived. For the singular source term, we use both the Gaussian model with various values of full width at half maximum and a localized discrete $\delta$-function. The discrete $\delta$-function was generalized to adopt the Gauss-Lobatto collocation points of the spectral domain. The gravitational waveforms are measured. Numerical results show that the developed hybrid method accurately yields the quasi-normal modes and the power-law decay profile. The numerical results also show that the power-law decay profile is less sensitive to the shape of the regularized $\delta$-function for the Gaussian model than expected. The Gaussian model also yields better results than the localized discrete $\delta$-function.