Orbiting binary black holes - From the post-Newtonian regime to the innermost stable circular orbit by combining initial data sequences and numerical evolutions

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The NSF's LIGO gravitational wave detectors are among a number of new and planned facilities all over the world which are designed to directly detect and measure gravitational waves. The observation of gravitational waves will open a new window on the universe by enabling us to study exotic objects such as black holes, supernovae, neutron stars, collapsars and gamma-ray bursts in a completely different way. The work in this project is aimed at continuing the development of a generic numerical code capable of simulating what is expected to be one of the most important sources of gravitational radiation, namely binary systems consisting of black holes. The specific focus of this project is to improve such binary black hole simulations by (i) providing more realistic initial conditions for the simulations, (ii) improving the quality and accuracy of the simulations and (iii) studying the validity and utility of approximation schemes such as the periodic standing-wave approximation.This work is important because only accurate simulations, which start from realistic initial conditions, will be able to produce reliable theoretical predictions of the gravitational waves which will be observed in the near future. In addition, this investigation makes key contributions to synergistic efforts, ranging from numerical and mathematical relativity to gravitational wave astrophysics. It is carried out in collaboration with the relativity groups at the University of Texas in Brownsville and the University of Jena in Germany. Regular exchanges benefit students from all three institutions.