Title: How to simulate black hole collisions

Abstract: In 2015 astronomers and physicists used the Laser Interferometer Gravitational wave Observatory (LIGO) to make the first detection of two black holes colliding. To date over 200 black hole collisions have been detected. Large-scale parallel computer simulations play a critical role in understanding what is observed by providing templates that noisy data is compared against. After giving an overview of the physical motivation for simulating such systems, I will discuss how my group uses spectral-type methods to perform numerical simulations that are thousands of times more efficient than competing finite-difference methods. I will finish with a look towards future challenges that upcoming detectors pose, which ultimately will require significant advances in numerical algorithms to achieve the required near-machine-precision accuracies.

Bio: Nils is an assistant professor of physics focusing on numerical simulations in gravity, specifically the collision of two black holes or stars. He received his PhD from Cornell in 2020 and spent 3 years as a Sherman Fairchild postdoctoral fellow at Caltech before returning to Cornell.