Extending the lifetime of 3D black hole computations with a new hyperbolic system of evolution equations

Abstract

We present a new many-parameter family of hyperbolic representations of Einstein's equations, which we obtain by a straightforward generalization of previously known systems. We solve the resulting evolution equations numerically for a Schwarzschild black hole in three spatial dimensions, and find that the stability of the simulation is strongly dependent on the form of the equations (i.e. the choice of parameters of the hyperbolic system), independent of the numerics. For an appropriate range of parameters we can evolve a single three-dimensional black hole to t ≃ 600 M – 1300 M, and we are apparently limited by constraint-violating solutions of the evolution equations. We expect that our method should result in comparable times for evolutions of a binary black hole system.

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