Geometry of a Black Hole Collision

Creators: Matzner, Richard A.; Seidel, H. E.; Shapiro, Stuart L.; Smarr, L.; Suen, W.-M.; Teukolsky, Saul A.; Winicour, J.

Abstract

The Binary Black Hole Alliance was formed to study the collision of black holes and the resulting gravitational radiation by computationally solving Einstein's equations for general relativity. The location of the black hole surface in a head-on collision has been determined in detail and is described here. The geometrical features that emerge are presented along with an analysis and explanation in terms of the spacetime curvature inherent in the strongly gravitating black hole region. This curvature plays a direct, important, and analytically explicable role in the formation and evolution of the event horizon associated with the surfaces of the black holes.

Additional Information

© 1995 American Association for the Advancement of Science. We thank D. Eardley, R. Geroch, R. Gómez, J. M. Stewart, K. Thorne, F. Tipler, and M. Visser for helpful comments on this work. We are especially grateful to J. Massó and P. Walker for producing Fig. 10 and for contributing significantly to the analysis in this paper. We also thank M. Blanton, M. Chia, S. Hughes, C. Keeton, P. Walker, and K. Walsh for participating in the computation and production of Figs. 3 and 4. This research was funded by the NSF Grand Challenge Grant PHY93-18152/ASC93-18152 (ARPA supplemented) and supported by the following individual grants: by NSF grant PHY83 10083, Texas TARP-085, and a Cray University Research Grant (R.A.M.); by NCSA and by NSF grant PHY 94-07882 (H.E.S. and L.S.); by NSF grants AST 91-19475 and PHY 94-08378 and National Aeronautics and Space Administration grant NAGW-2364 (S.L.S. and S.A.T.); by NSF grant PHY 94-04788 (W.-M.S.); and by NSF grant PHY92-08349 (J.W.). Computer time was made available by NCSA and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (in part through MetaCenter grant MCA94P015), and by the Cornell Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering (supported in part by NSF, IBM Corporation, New York State, and the Cornell Research Institute).

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