2002/03/31 by Harald P. Pfeiffer, Harald Pfeiffer, Gregory B. Cook +1 · 4 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Binary black hole #Binary number #Black Holes and Theoretical Physics #Black hole (networking) #Boundary value problem #Classical mechanics #Computer science #Conformal map #Constraint (computer-aided design) #Curvature #General relativity #Geometry #Gravitation #Gravitational wave #Mathematical analysis #Mathematics #Metric (unit) #Numerical relativity #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum mechanics #Superposition principle #Theoretical physics #gr-qc
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.66.024047
published as Phys.Rev. D66 (2002) 024047 · 18 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D
arxiv created 2002/06/22 · openalex publication_date 2002/07/31 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We compare the results of constructing binary black hole initial data with three different decompositions of the constraint equations of general relativity. For each decomposition we compute the initial data using a superposition of two Kerr-Schild black holes to fix the freely specifiable data. We find that these initial-data sets differ significantly, with the ADM energy varying by as much as 5% of the total mass. We find that all initial-data sets currently used for evolutions might contain unphysical gravitational radiation of the order of several percent of the total mass. This is comparable to the amount of gravitational-wave energy observed during the evolved collision. More astrophysically realistic initial data will require more careful choices of the freely specifiable data and boundary conditions for both the metric and extrinsic curvature. However, we find that the choice of extrinsic curvature affects the resulting data sets more strongly than the choice of conformal metric.