Puncture Initial Data for Black-Hole Binaries with High Spins and High Boosts

We solve the Hamiltonian and momentum constraints of general relativity for two black holes with nearly extremal spins and relativistic boosts in the puncture formalism. We use a non-conformally-flat ansatz with an attenuated superposition of two Lorentz-boosted, conformally Kerr or conformally Schwarzschild 3-metrics and their corresponding extrinsic curvatures. We compare evolutions of these data with the standard Bowen-York conformally flat ansatz (technically limited to intrinsic spins $\chi=S/M^2_{\text{ADM}}=0.928$ and boosts $P/M_{\text{ADM}}=0.897$), finding, typically, an order of magnitude smaller burst of spurious radiation and agreement with inspiral and merger. As a first case study, we evolve two equal-mass black holes from rest with an initial separation of $d=12M$ and spins $\chi_i=S_i/m_i^2=0.99$, compute the waveforms produced by the collision, the energy and angular momentum radiated, and the recoil of the final remnant black hole. We find that the black-hole trajectories curve at close separations, leading to the radiation of angular momentum. We also study orbiting nonspinning and moderate-spin black-hole binaries and compare these with standard Bowen-York data. We find a substantial reduction in the nonphysical initial burst of radiation which leads to cleaner waveforms. Finally, we study the case of orbiting binary black-hole systems with spin magnitude $\chi_i=0.95$ in an aligned configuration and compare waveform and final remnant results with those of the SXS Collaboration, finding excellent agreement. This represents the first moving punctures evolution of orbiting and spinning black holes exceeding the Bowen-York limit. Finally, we study different choices of the initial lapse and lapse evolution equation in the moving punctures approach to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the simulations.
Comment: 23 pages, 32 figures. Version accepted to PRD