Suitable gauge conditions are fundamental for stable and accurate numerical-relativity simulations of inspiralling compact binaries. A number of well-studied conditions have been developed over the last decade for both the lapse and the shift and these have been successfully used both in vacuum and non-vacuum spacetimes when simulating binaries with comparable masses. At the same time, recent evidence has emerged that the standard Gamma-driver shift condition requires a careful and non-trivial tuning of its parameters to ensure long-term stable evolutions of unequal-mass binaries. We present a novel gauge condition in which the damping constant is promoted to be a dynamical variable and the solution of an evolution equation. We show that this choice removes the need for special tuning and provides a shift damping term which is free of instabilities in our simulations and dynamically adapts to the individual positions and masses of the binary black-hole system. Our gauge condition also reduces the variations in the coordinate size of the apparent horizon of the larger black hole and could therefore be useful when simulating binaries with very small mass ratios.
A maximally rotating Kerr black hole is said to be extremal. In this paper we introduce the corresponding restrictions for isolated and dynamical horizons. These reduce to the standard notions for Kerr but in general do not require the horizon to be either stationary or rotationally symmetric. We consider physical implications and applications of these results. In particular we introduce a parameter e which characterizes how close a horizon is to extremality and should be calculable in numerical simulations.
We find stealth Schwarzschild solutions with a nontrivial profile of the scalar field regular on the horizon in the Einstein gravity coupled to the scalar field with the k-essence and/or generalized cubic galileon terms, which is a subclass of the Horndeski theory breaking the shift symmetry, where the propagation speed of gravitational waves coincides with the speed of light. After deriving sufficient conditions for the shift symmetry breaking theory to allow a general Ricci-flat metric solution with a nontrivial scalar field profile, we focus on the stealth Schwarzschild solution with the scalar field with or without time dependence. For the profile $phi=phi_0(r)$, we explicitly obtain two types of stealth Schwarzschild solutions, one of which is regular on the event horizon. The linear perturbation analysis clarifies that the kinetic term of the scalar mode identically vanishes, indicating that the scalar mode is strongly coupled. The absence of the kinetic term of the scalar mode in the quadratic action would inevitably arise for the stealth Schwarzschild solutions in the theory with a general scalar field profile depending only on the spatial coordinates. On the other hand, for the time-dependent scalar field profile, we clarify that there does not exist a stealth Schwarzschild solution in the shift symmetry breaking theories.
We initiate the development of a horizon-based initial (or rather final) value formalism to describe the geometry and physics of the near-horizon spacetime: data specified on the horizon and a future ingoing null boundary determine the near-horizon geometry. In this initial paper we restrict our attention to spherically symmetric spacetimes made dynamic by matter fields. We illustrate the formalism by considering a black hole interacting with a) inward-falling, null matter (with no outward flux) and b) a massless scalar field. The inward-falling case can be exactly solved from horizon data. For the more involved case of the scalar field we analytically investigate the near slowly evolving horizon regime and propose a numerical integration for the general case.
Gravitational wave and electromagnetic observations can provide new insights into the nature of matter at supra-nuclear densities inside neutron stars. Improvements in electromagnetic and gravitational wave sensing instruments continue to enhance the accuracy with which they can measure the masses, radii, and tidal deformability of neutron stars. These better measurements place tighter constraints on the equation of state of cold matter above nuclear density. In this article, we discuss a complementary approach to get insights into the structure of neutron stars by providing a model prediction for non-linear fundamental eigenmodes (f-modes) and their decay over time, which are thought to be induced by time-dependent tides in neutron star binaries. Building on pioneering studies that relate the properties of f-modes to the structure of neutron stars, we systematically study this link in the non-perturbative regime using models that utilize numerical relativity. Using a suite of fully relativistic numerical relativity simulations of oscillating TOV stars, we establish blueprints for the numerical accuracy needed to accurately compute the frequency and damping times of f-mode oscillations, which we expect to be a good guide for the requirements in the binary case. We show that the resulting f-mode frequencies match established results from linear perturbation theory, but the damping times within numerical errors depart from linear predictions. This work lays the foundation for upcoming studies aimed at a comparison of theoretical models of f-mode signatures in gravitational waves, and their uncertainties with actual gravitational wave data, searching for neutron star binaries on highly eccentric orbits, and probing neutron star structure at high densities.
In this report we obtain higher order asymptotic expansions of solutions to wave equations with frictional and viscoelastic damping terms. Although the diffusion phenomena are dominant, differences between the solutions we deal with and those of heat equations can be seen by comparing the second order expansions of them. In order to analyze such effects we consider the weighted L1 initial data. We also give some lower bounds which show the optimality of obtained expansions.