Simulating binary black hole mergers using discontinuous Galerkin methods

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the first binary black hole merger simulations using discontinuous Galerkin methods within the SpECTRE code, achieving high accuracy and efficiency suitable for future gravitational-wave modeling.

Contribution

It introduces the application of discontinuous Galerkin methods to binary black hole simulations, enabling longer evolutions at reasonable computational costs.

Findings

Simulated ~18 orbits of binary black hole inspiral, merger, and ringdown.

Successfully extracted gravitational waves at null infinity using Cauchy Characteristic Evolution.

First open-source spectral-type simulation of binary black holes for the community.

Abstract

Binary black holes are the most abundant source of gravitational-wave observations. Gravitational-wave observatories in the next decade will require tremendous increases in the accuracy of numerical waveforms modeling binary black holes, compared to today's state of the art. One approach to achieving the required accuracy is using spectral-type methods that scale to many processors. Using the SpECTRE numerical-relativity code, we present the first simulations of a binary black hole inspiral, merger, and ringdown using discontinuous Galerkin methods. The efficiency of discontinuous Galerkin methods allows us to evolve the binary through ~18 orbits at reasonable computational cost. We then use SpECTRE's Cauchy Characteristic Evolution (CCE) code to extract the gravitational waves at future null infinity. The open-source nature of SpECTRE means this is the first time a spectral-type method for simulating binary black hole evolutions is available to the entire numerical-relativity community.