Fully general relativistic numerical calculations of the gravitational radiation produced by the dynamics of compact objects will be carried out by PI Centrella in collaboration with senior colleagues. One important class of sources concerns rapidly rotating stellar cores that have expended their nuclear fuel and are prevented from undergoing further collapse by centrifugal forces. The development of the bar instability in such an object will produce gravitational radiation and may shed enough angular momentum to allow full collapse to a supernova. In addition, coalescing compact binaries are the main target sources for the ground-based interferometers. Numerical modeling is needed to calculate the details of the actual coalescence. In particular, the frequency at which the stars begin their final plunge, spiralling in faster than they would on purely point mass trajectories, as well as other details of the coalescence waveforms and spectra may yield valuable information about neutron star radii and the nuclear equation of state.
