Event Horizons in Numerical Relativity I: Methods and Tests

Abstract

This is the first paper in a series on event horizons in numerical relativity. In this paper we present methods for obtaining the location of an event horizon in a numerically generated spacetime. The location of an event horizon is determined based on two key ideas: (1) integrating backward in time, and (2) integrating the whole horizon surface. The accuracy and efficiency of the methods are examined with various sample spacetimes, including both analytic (Schwarzschild and Kerr) and numerically generated black holes. The numerically evolved spacetimes contain highly distorted black holes, rotating black holes, and colliding black holes. In all cases studied, our methods can find event horizons to within a very small fraction of a grid zone.

22 pages, LaTeX with RevTeX 3.0 macros, 20 uuencoded gz-compressed postscript figures. Also available at http://jean-luc.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Papers/ Submitted to Physical Review D

References in corpus (8)

• The Collision of Two Black Holes
• Towards a Singularity-Proof Scheme in Numerical Relativity
• The Head-On Collision of Two Equal Mass Black Holes Peter Anninos
• The Evolution of Distorted Rotating Black Holes II: Dynamics and Analysis
• Horizon Boundary Condition for Black Hole Spacetimes
• Dynamics of Apparent and Event Horizons
• Null cone evolution of axisymmetric vacuum spacetimes
• The Evolution of Distorted Rotating Black Holes I: Methods and Tests

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• Pseudo-spectral apparent horizon finders: an efficient new algorithm
• Dynamical evolution of quasi-circular binary black hole data
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