Numerical simulation of orbiting black holes

Phys Rev Lett. 2004 May 28;92(21):211101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.211101. Epub 2004 May 24.

Abstract

We present numerical simulations of binary black hole systems which for the first time last for about one orbital period for close but still separate black holes as indicated by the absence of a common apparent horizon. An important part of the method is the construction of comoving coordinates, in which both the angular and the radial motion are minimized through a dynamically adjusted shift condition. We use fixed mesh refinement for computational efficiency.