Three-dimensional adaptive evolution of gravitational waves in numerical relativity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the successful implementation of adaptive mesh refinement techniques for evolving weak gravitational waves in numerical relativity, improving simulation efficiency and accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a 2-level adaptive mesh refinement method for simulating gravitational waves within Einstein's equations, advancing numerical relativity techniques.

Findings

Adaptive mesh refinement closely matches fine grid results

The method improves computational efficiency

It accurately captures gravitational wave features

Abstract

Adaptive techniques are crucial for successful numerical modeling of gravitational waves from astrophysical sources such as coalescing compact binaries, since the radiation typically has wavelengths much larger than the scale of the sources. We have carried out an important step toward this goal, the evolution of weak gravitational waves using adaptive mesh refinement in the Einstein equations. The 2-level adaptive simulation is compared with unigrid runs at coarse and fine resolution, and is shown to track closely the features of the fine grid run.