Characteristic extraction tool for gravitational waveforms

Creators: Babiuc, M. C.; Szilágyi, B.; Winicour, J.; Zlochower, Y.

Abstract

We develop and calibrate a characteristic waveform extraction tool whose major improvements and corrections of prior versions allow satisfaction of the accuracy standards required for advanced LIGO data analysis. The extraction tool uses a characteristic evolution code to propagate numerical data on an inner worldtube supplied by a 3+1 Cauchy evolution to obtain the gravitational waveform at null infinity. With the new extraction tool, high accuracy and convergence of the numerical error can be demonstrated for an inspiral and merger of mass M binary black holes even for an extraction worldtube radius as small as R=20M. The tool provides a means for unambiguous comparison between waveforms generated by evolution codes based upon different formulations of the Einstein equations and based upon different numerical approximations.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Physical Society. Received 17 November 2010; published 29 August 2011. We thank L. Lindblom and C. Reisswig for many helpful discussions. B. S. acknowledges support from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation and NSF grants PHY-061459 and PHY-0652995 to the California Institute of Technology. J.W. acknowledges support from NSF grants PHY-0553597 and PHY-0854623 to the University of Pittsburgh. Y. Z. acknowledges support from NSF grants PHY-0722315, PHY-0653303, PHY-0714388, PHY-0722703, DMS-0820923, PHY-0929114, PHY-0969855, and NSFCDI-1028087 and NASA grants 07-ATFP07-0158 and HST-AR-11763 to RIT and computational resources provided by the Ranger cluster at TACC (Teragrid allocations TG-PHY080040N and TG-PHY060027N) and by NewHorizons at RIT. M.C. B. acknowledges support from NSF grant PHY-0969709 to the Marshall University and computational resources provided by the Teragrid allocation TG-PHY090008. M.C. B. and B. S. thank the University of Pittsburgh for hospitality during the major part of this project. An essential component of this work is the PITT null code, to which N. T. Bishop, R. Gόmez, R. A. Isaacson, L. Lehner, P. Papadopoulos, and J. Welling have made major contributions.

Attached Files

Published - Babiuc2011p15787Phys_Rev_D.pdf

Files

Babiuc2011p15787Phys_Rev_D.pdf

Files (1.3 MB)

Name	Size	Download all
Babiuc2011p15787Phys_Rev_D.pdf md5:2a97af4cc53f5ab44a6d206ebf32c0af	1.3 MB	Preview Download

Additional details

	All versions	This version
Views	0	0
Downloads	0	0
Data volume	0 Bytes	0 Bytes