Strong gravity beyond General Relativity

TL;DR

This thesis develops new numerical relativity methods to study strong gravity phenomena, enabling simulations of black hole mergers in extended theories of gravity beyond General Relativity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel formulation of Einstein equations in higher dimensions for scalar-tensor and Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theories, implemented in an open-source code for black hole merger simulations.

Findings

Enabled evolution of black hole mergers in extended gravity theories

Studied hyperbolicity loss and weak coupling conditions in these theories

Provided a foundation for testing deviations from General Relativity

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the application of numerical relativity methods to the solutions of problems in strong gravity. Our goal is the study of mergers of compact objects in the strong field regime where non-linear dynamics manifest and deviations from General Relativity could be found. We develop a new formulation of the Einstein equations in d+1 spacetime dimensions in the moving punctures approach, which leads to a well-posed set of equations for the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet gravity (EGB), as well as for the most general parity-invariant scalar-tensor theory of gravity up to four derivatives (4$\partial$ST). Using this formulation, we have implemented the equations of the 4$\partial$ST theory in GRFolres, an open-source extension of our numerical relativity code GRChombo. This has enabled us to evolve equal and unequal-mass Binary Black Hole mergers in this effective field theory of gravity, as well as to study the loss of hyperbolicity and its relation to the weak coupling condition, among other topics of interest left for further study.