[Crib-list] Computational Reseach in Boston Seminar (CRiB) - Friday, 12/02/2005

[Shirley Entzminger]

 		COMPUTATIONAL RESEARCH IN BOSTON SEMINAR



DATE:		FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2005
TIME:		12:30 PM
LOCATION:	Building 32, Room 144 (Stata Center)

Pizza and beverages will be provided.



TOPIC:		COMPLEX NUMERICAL RELATIVITY:
 		3D SPECTRAL REPRESENTATION OF BLACK HOLE SPACETIMES


SPEAKER:	MAURICE VAN PUTTEN


ABSTRACT:

The advance of working gravitational-wave detectors LIGO and Virgo puts 
general relativity at the forefront of experimental physics. Detection of 
gravitational radiation provides a method for identifying one of its most 
dramatic predictions: rotating black holes in binaries or newly formed in 
GRB-supernovae. The sensitivity of these laser- interferometric detectors 
for binary coalescence depends crucially on our a priori understanding of 
the emitted gravitational-wave forms.

A general purpose approach is numerical relativity, which is considered 
one of the Grand Challenges in scientific computing. We here discuss a 
three-dimensional spectral representation of black hole spacetimes as a 
starting point for efficient numerical algorithms with spectral accuracy 
for simulations of binary coalescence. This representation is based on a 
new duality between strongly nonlinear gravity and weakly nonlinear 
gravity in the complex plane. A subsequent foliation of space by a 
congruence of 2-spheres with complex radial coordinates reduces the 
Einstein equations to two dynamical equations of motion -- corresponding 
to the two polarization modes of gravitational radiation.

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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Mathematics
Cambridge, MA  0213


http://www-math.mit.edu/crib
For information on CRiB, contact:
Alan Edelman:  edelman at math.mit.edu
Steven G. Johnson:  stevenj at math.mit.edu
Jeremy Kepner:  kepner at ll.mit.edu