ASTROPHYSICS

General relativity describes the gravitational interaction as the curvature of spacetime. This involves complicated partial differential equations, and consequently extreme scenarios can be treated only by numerical simulations. In this project spacetimes close to the critical threshold of black hole formation were evolved on SuperMuc. These computations were performed using bamps, a new massively parallel code for numerical relativity. The spacetimes constructed constitute the most extreme regime imaginable - that in which cosmic censorship itself may be violated and the black hole singularity could be seen by distant observers. 

The recent observations of gravitational waves (GWs) marked a breakthrough and inaugurated the field of GW astronomy. To extract information from a detection, the measured signal needs to be cross-correlated with a template family. However, due to the nonlinearity of Einstein’s equations, numerical simulations have to be used to study systems with gravitational fields strong enough to emit GWs. This project focused on the simulation of systems consisting of two neutron stars and investigated the effect of the mass ratio and the influence of the spin of the individual stars.