Matzner Professors Richard Matzner and Matthew Choptuik of the University of Texas Center for Relativity will work with postdocs and other members of the Center, to develop computer codes that describe the interaction and collision of astrophysical black holes and the production of gravitational radiation in their interactions. The techniques will be extended from simpler descriptions of single black holes, and will make use of a set of existing computer codes that simulate black hole interactions. Because of technical advances in the computational and analytical description (particularly methods for locating the surfaces of the black holes), this is a timely effort, and should yield significant scientific results. Some of this work will be done in collaboration with The University of Pittsburgh, and with The Pennsylvania State University.
The detection of gravitational radiation by detectors now under construction will open a dramatic new window on the universe. Having a theoretical prediction of the signals from possible astrophysical sources will be extremely important to understanding the expected signals, and to designing the detection algorithms themselves. Black hole interactions are very important, because black holes may be the strongest sources of gravitational radiation signals. This project will test this statement, and will provide a substantial theoretical input to the prediction of gravitational wave signals as they are detected. In addition this is an example of very large scale scientific computation, and will develop and extend techniques that are applicable in a wide range of computational-science problems. ***
