Steinn Sigurdsson, Committee Member Abhay Vasant Ashtekar, Committee Chair/Co-Chair Pablo Laguna, Committee Member Lee S Finn, Committee Member
Keywords:
Black Holes General Relativity
Abstract:
The isolated horizon framework is applied to numerical relativity.
This framework describes black holes which are in equilibrium in a
spacetime which is otherwise fully dynamical. We introduce
isolated horizons in a way which is directly applicable in
numerical evolutions. In particular, we present and numerically
implement a coordinate invariant method for calculating the mass
and angular momentum of isolated horizons. We also show how
isolated horizons can be used to study the local geometry of a
black hole and extract invariant gravitational waveforms. We
apply some results from the isolated horizon framework to
calculate the binding energy between two black holes. This will be
useful in comparing different initial data sets which represent
similar physical situations. Finally, we also present a method
for studying the physics of dynamical black holes. In particular,
we derive balance laws relating the flux of matter
fields/radiation with the change in the physical parameters of the
black hole such as angular momentum and mass.
