An Efficient Method for Fully Relativistic Simulations of Coalescing Binary Neutron Stars
Loading...
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Description
The merger of two neutron stars has been proposed as a source of gamma-ray bursts, r-process elements, and detectable gravitational waves. Extracting information from observations of these phenomena requires fully relativistic simulations. Unfortunately, the only demonstrated method for stably evolving neutron stars requires solving elliptic equations at each time step, adding substantially to the computational resources required. In this paper we present a simpler, more efficient method. The key insight is in how we apply numerical diffusion. We perform a number of tests to validate the method and our implementation. We also carry out a very rough simulation of coalescence and extraction of the gravitational waves to show that the method is viable if realistic initial data are provided.
10 pages, 24 figures, fixed some typos, added a paragraph about the diffusion method and time stepping
10 pages, 24 figures, fixed some typos, added a paragraph about the diffusion method and time stepping