2007/07/31 by Z. B. Etienne, Zachariah B. Etienne, Joshua A. Faber +3 · 3 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Binary black hole #Binary number #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Black hole (networking) #Classical mechanics #Compressibility #Computer science #Conformal map #Conservative vector field #Constraint (computer-aided design) #Geometry #Gravitation #Gravitational wave #Mathematical analysis #Mathematics #Mechanics #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Waveform #astro-ph #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.76.101503
published as Phys.Rev.D76:101503,2007 · 5 pages, 5 figures, accepted by PRD Rapid Communications, RevTeX
arxiv created 2007/09/27 · openalex publication_date 2007/11/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We follow the inspiral and merger of equal-mass black holes (BHs) by the moving puncture technique and demonstrate that both the exterior solution and the asymptotic gravitational waveforms are unchanged when the initial interior solution is replaced by constraint-violating junk initial data. We apply this result to evolve conformal thin-sandwich (CTS) binary BH initial data by filling their excised interiors with arbitrary, but smooth, initial data and evolving with standard puncture gauge choices. The waveforms generated for both puncture and filled-CTS initial data are remarkably similar, and there are only minor differences between irrotational and corotational CTS BH binaries. Even the interior solutions appear to evolve to the same constraint-satisfying solution at late times, independent of the initial data.