CaltechAUTHORS
Published April 11, 2011 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Frame-Dragging Vortexes and Tidal Tendexes Attached to Colliding Black Holes: Visualizing the Curvature of Spacetime

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Cornell University
  • 2. ROR icon National Institute for Theoretical Physics
  • 3. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 4. ROR icon Stellenbosch University

Abstract

When one splits spacetime into space plus time, the spacetime curvature (Weyl tensor) gets split into an "electric" part ε_(jk) that describes tidal gravity and a "magnetic" part B_(jk) that describes differential dragging of inertial frames. We introduce tools for visualizing B_(jk) (frame-drag vortex lines, their vorticity, and vortexes) and ε_(jk) (tidal tendex lines, their tendicity, and tendexes) and also visualizations of a black-hole horizon's (scalar) vorticity and tendicity. We use these tools to elucidate the nonlinear dynamics of curved spacetime in merging black-hole binaries.

Additional Information

© 2011 American Physical Society. Received 21 December 2010; published 11 April 2011. We thank Larry Kidder and Saul Teukolsky for helpful discussions. Our simulations have been performed by using the Spectral Einstein Code (SpEC) [19]. This research was supported by NSF Grants No. PHY-0601459, No. PHY-0653653, No. PHY-0960291, No. PHY- 0969111, and No. PHY-1005426 and CAREER Grant No. PHY-0956189, by NASA Grants No. NNX09AF97G and No. NNX09AF96G, and by the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, the Brinson Foundation, and the David and Barbara Groce fund.

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Published - Owen2011p13644Phys_Rev_Lett.pdf

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Owen2011p13644Phys_Rev_Lett.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

Eprint ID
23559
Resolver ID
CaltechAUTHORS:20110505-111533214

Funding

NSF
PHY-0601459
NSF
PHY-0653653
NSF
PHY-0960291
NSF
PHY-0969111
NSF
PHY-1005426
NASA
PHY-0956189
NASA
NNX09AF97G
NASA
NNX09AF96G
Sherman Fairchild Foundation
Brinson Foundation
David and Barbara Groce Fund

Dates

Created
2011-05-05
Created from EPrint's datestamp field
Updated
2021-11-09
Created from EPrint's last_modified field

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
TAPIR , Physics Department