Moving black holes via singularity excision

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new singularity excision algorithm that enables stable numerical simulations of moving black holes by extending previous methods used for stationary black holes, incorporating elements from scalar field dynamics studies.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel excision technique for simulating moving black holes, improving stability and robustness in dynamic numerical relativity simulations.

Findings

Successfully simulated moving black holes with the new excision method.

Demonstrated robustness of the algorithm with black holes moving across the computational domain.

Extended previous static black hole excision techniques to dynamic scenarios.

Abstract

We present a singularity excision algorithm appropriate for numerical simulations of black holes moving throughout the computational domain. The method is an extension of the excision procedure previously used to obtain stable simulations of single, non-moving black holes. The excision procedure also shares elements used in recent work to study the dynamics of a scalarfield in the background of a single, boosted black hole. The robustness of our excision method is tested with single black-hole evolutions using a coordinate system in which the coordinate location of the black hole, and thus the excision boundary, moves throughout the computational domain.