A fast apparent horizon finder for three-dimensional Cartesian grids in numerical relativity

DOI10.1088/0264-9381/21/2/026zbMATH Open1045.83006arXivgr-qc/0306056OpenAlexW3105476737MaRDI QIDQ4470717FDOQ4470717

Jonathan Thornburg

Publication date: 15 June 2004

Published in: Classical and Quantum Gravity (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: In 3+1 numerical simulations of dynamic black hole spacetimes, it's useful to be able to find the apparent horizon(s) (AH) in each slice of a time evolution. A number of AH finders are available, but they often take many minutes to run, so they're too slow to be practically usable at each time step. Here I present a new AH finder,_AHFinderDirect_, which is very fast and accurate: at typical resolutions it takes only a few seconds to find an AH to $sim10^{-5}m$ accuracy on a GHz-class processor. I assume that an AH to be searched for is a Strahlk"orper (star-shaped region) with respect to some local origin, and so parameterize the AH shape by $r=h(angle)$ for some single-valued function $h:S^{2}oR{e}^{+}$. The AH equation then becomes a nonlinear elliptic PDE in $h$ on $S^2$, whose coefficients are algebraic functions of $g_{ij}$, $K_{ij}$, and the Cartesian-coordinate spatial derivatives of $g_{ij}$. I discretize $S^2$ using 6 angular patches (one each in the neighborhood of the $pmx$, $pmy$, and $pmz$ axes) to avoid coordinate singularities, and finite difference the AH equation in the angular coordinates using 4th order finite differencing. I solve the resulting system of nonlinear algebraic equations (for $h$ at the angular grid points) by Newton's method, using a "symbolic differentiation" technique to compute the Jacobian matrix._AHFinderDirect_ is implemented as a thorn in the_Cactus_ computational toolkit, and is freely available by anonymous CVS checkout.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0306056

zbMATH Keywords

apparent horizoncoordinate singularities

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Black holes (83C57) Computational methods for problems pertaining to relativity and gravitational theory (83-08)

Cited In (23)

• A new spectral apparent horizon finder for 3D numerical relativity
• Characteristic evolution and matching
• Neutron star merger remnants
• Colliding Black Holes and Gravitational Waves
• GRChombo: numerical relativity with adaptive mesh refinement
• Challenging the Paradigm of Singularity Excision in Gravitational Collapse
• Numerical Simulations of Black Hole Formation
• Initial conditions for numerical relativity: introduction to numerical methods for solving elliptic PDEs
• Primordial black hole formation with full numerical relativity
• Lessons for adaptive mesh refinement in numerical relativity
• Curvature and dynamical spacetimes: can we peer into the quantum regime?
• Unequal-mass boson-star binaries: initial data and merger dynamics
• Cosmic expansion from spinning black holes
• Oscillon preheating in full general relativity
• Event and apparent horizon finders for \(3+1\) numerical relativity
• Post-Newtonian quasicircular initial orbits for numerical relativity
• Isolated and dynamical horizons and their applications
• Black-hole binaries, gravitational waves, and numerical relativity
• Orbiting black-hole binaries and apparent horizons in higher dimensions
• Kranc: a Mathematica package to generate numerical codes for tensorial evolution equations
• Malaise and remedy of binary boson-star initial data
• Characteristic evolution and matching
• Formation of Supermassive Black Holes through Fragmentation of Torodial Supermassive Stars

Uses Software

• Cactus
• AHFinderDirect
• Carpet

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