Black-Hole Puncture Initial Data with Realistic Gravitational Wave Content

Bernard J. Kelly, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Wolfgang Tichy, Florida Atlantic University
Manuela Campanelli, Rochester Institute of Technology
B. F. Whiting, University of Florida, Gainsville

This is the pre-print of an article published by the American Physical Society. The final, published version is available here: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.76.024008

© 2007 American Physical Society

Also archived in arXiv:0704.0628 v2 Aug 2, 2007

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works in February 2014.

Abstract

We present improved post-Newtonian-inspired initial data for non-spinning black-hole binaries, suitable for numerical evolution with punctures. We revisit the work of Tichy et al. [W. Tichy, B. Br¨ugmann, M. Campanelli, and P. Diener, Phys. Rev. D 67, 064008 (2003)], explicitly calculating the remaining integral terms. These terms improve accuracy in the far zone and, for the first time, include realistic gravitational waves in the initial data. We investigate the behavior of these data both at the center of mass and in the far zone, demonstrating agreement of the transverse traceless parts of the new metric with quadrupole-approximation waveforms. These data can be used for numerical evolutions, enabling a direct connection between the merger waveforms and the post-Newtonian inspiral waveforms.