General Relativity Seminar

Speaker: Leo Stein (Mississippi)

Title: Resolving memory in numerical relativity, and fixing BMS frames for modeling

Abstract: Numerical relativity waveforms serve as ground truth for detection and parameter estimation of binary black hole mergers. Most NR waveforms to date miss memory effects, as they were extracted from simulations using an approximation called extrapolation. I will report on the SXS collaboration’s capacity to resolve memory effects in production NR simulations using Cauchy-characteristic evolution (CCE), and in the future with Cauchy-characteristic matching (CCM). I will further report on how BH perturbation and post-Newtonian theory furnish natural BMS frames. With these BMS frames, we can extract well-defined remnant quantities, perform precision ringdown modeling, and build complete surrogate waveform models that capture memory effects.