Reducing orbital eccentricity in binary black hole simulations
| dc.creator | Pfeiffer, Harald P. | |
| dc.creator | Brown, Duncan A. | |
| dc.creator | Kidder, Lawrence E. | |
| dc.creator | Lindblom, Lee | |
| dc.creator | Lovelace, Geoffrey | |
| dc.creator | Scheel, Mark A. | |
| dc.date | 2007-02-20 | |
| dc.date | 2007-04-25 | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-07T10:37:14Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-07-07T10:37:14Z | |
| dc.description | Binary black hole simulations starting from quasi-circular (i.e., zero radial velocity) initial data have orbits with small but non-zero orbital eccentricities. In this paper the quasi-equilibrium initial-data method is extended to allow non-zero radial velocities to be specified in binary black hole initial data. New low-eccentricity initial data are obtained by adjusting the orbital frequency and radial velocities to minimize the orbital eccentricity, and the resulting ($\sim 5$ orbit) evolutions are compared with those of quasi-circular initial data. Evolutions of the quasi-circular data clearly show eccentric orbits, with eccentricity that decays over time. The precise decay rate depends on the definition of eccentricity; if defined in terms of variations in the orbital frequency, the decay rate agrees well with the prediction of Peters (1964). The gravitational waveforms, which contain $\sim 8$ cycles in the dominant l=m=2 mode, are largely unaffected by the eccentricity of the quasi-circular initial data. The overlap between the dominant mode in the quasi-circular evolution and the same mode in the low-eccentricity evolution is about 0.99. | |
| dc.description | 27 pages, 9 figures; various minor clarifications; accepted to the "New Frontiers" special issue of CQG | |
| dc.identifier | https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0702106 | |
| dc.identifier | http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0702106 | |
| dc.identifier | Class.Quant.Grav.24:S59-S82,2007 | |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.1088/0264-9381/24/12/S06 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/180315 | |
| dc.subject | General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology | |
| dc.title | Reducing orbital eccentricity in binary black hole simulations | |
| dc.type | text |