Miguel Alcubierre et al 2004 Class. Quantum Grav. 21 589 doi:10.1088/0264-9381/21/2/019
Miguel Alcubierre1, Gabrielle Allen2, Carles Bona3, David Fiske4, Tom Goodale2, F Siddhartha Guzmán2, Ian Hawke2, Scott H Hawley5, Sascha Husa2, Michael Koppitz2, Christiane Lechner2, Denis Pollney2, David Rideout2, Marcelo Salgado1, Erik Schnetter6, Edward Seidel2, Hisa-aki Shinkai7, Deirdre Shoemaker8, Béla Szilágyi9, Ryoji Takahashi10 and Jeff Winicour2,9
Show affiliationsIn recent years, many different numerical evolution schemes for Einstein's equations have been proposed to address stability and accuracy problems that have plagued the numerical relativity community for decades. Some of these approaches have been tested on different spacetimes, and conclusions have been drawn based on these tests. However, differences in results originate from many sources, including not only formulations of the equations, but also gauges, boundary conditions, numerical methods and so on. We propose to build up a suite of standardized testbeds for comparing approaches to the numerical evolution of Einstein's equations that are designed to both probe their strengths and weaknesses and to separate out different effects, and their causes, seen in the results. We discuss general design principles of suitable testbeds, and we present an initial round of simple tests with periodic boundary conditions. This is a pivotal first step towards building a suite of testbeds to serve the numerical relativists and researchers from related fields who wish to assess the capabilities of numerical relativity codes. We present some examples of how these tests can be quite effective in revealing various limitations of different approaches, and illustrating their differences. The tests are presently limited to vacuum spacetimes, can be run on modest computational resources and can be used with many different approaches used in the relativity community.
04.40.Nr Einstein-Maxwell spacetimes, spacetimes with fluids, radiation or classical fields
83C05 Einstein's equations (general structure, canonical formalism, Cauchy problems)
Issue 2 (21 January 2004)
Received 5 May 2003
Published 10 December 2003
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