Numerical Relativity

Thomas W. Baumgarte is a Professor of Physics at Bowdoin College, and an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Diploma (1993) and Doctorate (1995) from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, München, and held postdoctoral positions at Cornell University and the University of Illinois before joining the faculty at Bowdoin College. He is a recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. He has written over 65 research articles on a variety of topics in general relativity and relativistic astrophysics, including black holes and neutron stars, gravitational collapse, and more formal mathematical issues. Stuart L. Shapiro is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his A.B. from Harvard (1969) and his Ph.D. from Princeton (1973). He has published over 335 research articles spanning many topics in general relativity and theoretical astrophysics and co-authored the widely used textbook Black Holes, White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars; The Physics of Compact Objects (John Wiley, 1983). In addition to numerical relativity, Shapiro has worked on the physics and astrophysics of black holes and neutron stars, relativistic hydrodynamics, magnetohydrodynamics and stellar dynamics, and the generation of gravitational waves. He is a recipient of an IBM Supercomputing Award, a Forefronts of Large-Scale Computation Award, an Alfred P. Snow Research Fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and several teaching citations. He has served on the editorial boards of The Astrophysical Journal Letters and Classical and Quantum Gravity. He was elected Fellow of both the American Physical Society and Institute of Physics (UK).

• Preface; Suggestions for using this book; 1. General relativity preliminaries; 2. The 3+1 decomposition of Einstein's equations; 3. Constructing initial data; 4. Choosing coordinates: the lapse and shift; 5. Matter sources; 6. Numerical methods; 7. Locating black hole horizons; 8. Spherically symmetric spacetimes; 9. Gravitational waves; 10. Collapse of collisionless clusters in axisymmetry; 11. Recasting the evolution equations; 12. Binary black hole initial data; 13. Binary black hole evolution; 14. Rotating stars; 15. Binary neutron star initial data; 16. Binary neutron star evolution; 17. Binary black hole-neutron stars: initial data and evolution; 18. Epilogue; Appendixes; References; Index.

'Numerical relativity has come of age in the last few years, and Baumgarte and Shapiro have produced the first textbook on the subject. And what a book this is! Sufficiently complete to be an encyclopedia, yet accessible enough to be a genuine learning manual, the book is exceedingly well written. It covers virtually all aspects of numerical relativity, from formalism to the most modern application, and it is replete with beautiful and helpful diagrams. The book will serve as a useful reference to the researcher, and a source of enlightenment to many a student.' Eric Poisson, University of Guelph