| | 1 | |
| | 2 | Title: The Merger of Binary Black Holes in Gaseous Environments |
| | 3 | |
| | 4 | Speaker: Stuart L. Shapiro |
| | 5 | Professor of Physics and Astronomy |
| | 6 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| | 7 | |
| | 8 | Abstract: |
| | 9 | |
| | 10 | Numerical relativity has become an essential tool for solving |
| | 11 | Einstein's equations of general relativity for dynamical systems |
| | 12 | characterized by high velocities approaching the speed of light and |
| | 13 | strong gravitational fields. The implementation of new algorithms that |
| | 14 | can solve these nonlinear equations has enabled us to tackle many |
| | 15 | long-standing problems of astrophysical interest, leading to an |
| | 16 | explosion of important new results. Thanks to numerical relativity, |
| | 17 | the inspiral and merger of a binary black hole in a vacuum spacetime |
| | 18 | is a solved problem. Now numerical relativity is turning its powerful |
| | 19 | machinery to simulating many other scenarios, including the inspiral |
| | 20 | and merger of other compact binaries, as well as binary black hole |
| | 21 | mergers in more realistic astrophysical settings, like gaseous clouds |
| | 22 | and circumbinary disks. The goal is to probe events for which both |
| | 23 | gravitational and electromagnetic waves can be observed simultaneously |
| | 24 | from the same cosmic source. Some recent work at Illinois to advance |
| | 25 | this goal will be sketched in this talk. Computer-generated movies |
| | 26 | showing highlights of some of our relativistic simulations will be |
| | 27 | shown. |
