Calibration of Moving Puncture Simulations

TL;DR

This paper discusses the calibration of moving puncture simulations for binary black holes, focusing on accuracy, initial data, gauge choices, and code comparison to improve gravitational wave modeling.

Contribution

It introduces calibration techniques for moving puncture simulations, addressing key issues affecting accuracy and comparing two different simulation codes.

Findings

Quantified numerical errors and their impact on results.

Assessed the influence of initial data and gauge choices.

Validated simulation results through code comparison.

Abstract

We present single and binary black hole simulations that follow the moving puncture paradigm of simulating black-hole spacetimes without excision, and use moving boxes mesh refinement. Focussing on binary black hole configurations where the simulations cover roughly two orbits, we address five major issues determining the quality of our results: numerical discretization error, finite extraction radius of the radiation signal, physical appropriateness of initial data, gauge choice and computational performance. We also compare results we have obtained with the BAM code described here with the independent LEAN code.