J. David Brown

Neutralization of the cosmological constant by membrane creation

The quantum creation of closed membranes by totally antisymmetric tensor and gravitational fields is considered in arbitrary space-time dimension. The creation event is described by instanton tunneling. As membranes are produced, the energy density associated with the antisymmetric tensor fielld decreases, reducing the effective value of the cosmological constant. For a wide range of parameters and initial conditions, this process will naturally stop as soon as the cosmological constant is near zero, even if the energy remaining in the antisymmetric tensor field is large. Among the instantons obtained, some are interpreted as representing a topology change, in which an open space spontaneously compactifies; however, the quantum probability for these processes vanishes.

Dynamical neutralization of the cosmological constant

A dynamical process is described in which the cosmological constant is netralized through the quantum creation of closed membranes by totally antisymmetric tensor and gravitational fields.

On the Poisson brackets of differentiable generators in classical field theory

The canonical formulation of field theory on open spaces is considered. It is proved, under appropriate assumptions, that the Poisson bracket of two differentiable generators is also a differentiable generator.

Turduckening black holes: An Analytical and computational study

We provide a detailed analysis of several aspects of the turduckening technique for evolving black holes. At the analytical level we study the constraint propagation for a family of formulations of Einsteins field equations and identify under what conditions the turducken procedure is rigorously justified and under what conditions constraint violations will propagate to the outside of the black holes. We present high resolution spherically symmetric studies which verify our analytical predictions. Then we present three-dimensional simulations of single distorted black holes using different variations of the turduckening method and also the puncture method. We study the effect that these different methods have on the coordinate conditions, constraint violations, and extracted gravitational waves. We find that the waves agree up to small but nonvanishing differences, caused by escaping superluminal gauge modes. These differences become smaller with increasing detector location.

DYNAMICAL ROTATIONAL INSTABILITY AT LOW T/W

Dynamical instability is shown to occur in differentially rotating polytropes with N = 3.33 and T/|W| 0.14. This instability has a strong m = 1 mode, although the m = 2, 3, and 4 modes also appear. Such instability may allow a centrifugally hung core to begin collapsing to neutron star densities on a dynamical timescale. The gravitational radiation emitted by such unstable cores may be detectable with advanced ground-based detectors, such as LIGO-II. If the instability occurs in a supermassive star, it may produce gravitational radiation detectable by the space-based detector LISA.

Black hole entropy and the Hamiltonian formulation of diffeomorphism invariant theories

Path integral methods are used to derive a general expression for the entropy of a black hole in a diffeomorphism invariant theory. The result, which depends on the variational derivative of the Lagrangian with respect to the Riemann tensor, agrees with the result obtained from Noether charge methods by Iyer and Wald. The method used here is based on the direct expression of the density of states as a path integral (the microcanonical functional integral). The analysis makes crucial use of the Hamiltonian form of the action. An algorithm for placing the action of a diffeomorphism invariant theory in Hamiltonian form is presented. Other path integral approaches to the derivation of black hole entropy include the Hilbert action surface term method and the conical deficit angle method. The relationships between these path integral methods are presented. \textcopyright{} 1995 The American Physical Society.

Covariant formulations of Baumgarte, Shapiro, Shibata, and Nakamura and the standard gauge

The BSSN and standard gauge equations are written in covariant form with respect to spatial coordinate transformations. The BSSN variables are defined as tensors with no density weights. This allows us to evolve a given set of initial data using two different coordinate systems and to relate the results using the familiar tensor transformation rules. Two variants of the covariant equations are considered. These differ from one another in the way that the determinant of the conformal metric is evolved.

Interface conditions for wave propagation through mesh refinement boundaries

We study the propagation of waves across fixed mesh refinement boundaries in linear and nonlinear model equations in 1-D and 2-D, and in the 3-D Einstein equations of general relativity. We demonstrate that using linear interpolation to set the data in guard cells leads to the production of reflected waves at the refinement boundaries. Implementing quadratic interpolation to fill the guard cells suppresses these spurious signals.

Multigrid elliptic equation solver with adaptive mesh refinement

In this paper, we describe in detail the computational algorithm used by our parallel multigrid elliptic equation solver with adaptive mesh refinement. Our code uses truncation error estimates to adaptively refine the grid as part of the solution process. The presentation includes a discussion of the orders of accuracy that we use for prolongation and restriction operators to ensure second order accurate results and to minimize computational work. Code tests are presented that confirm the overall second order accuracy and demonstrate the savings in computational resources provided by adaptive mesh refinement.

Evolving a puncture black hole with fixed mesh refinement

We present an algorithm for treating mesh refinement interfaces in numerical relativity. We discuss the behavior of the solution near such interfaces located in the strong-field regions of dynamical black hole spacetimes, with particular attention to the convergence properties of the simulations. In our applications of this technique to the evolution of puncture initial data with vanishing shift, we demonstrate that it is possible to simultaneously maintain second order convergence near the puncture and extend the outer boundary beyond 100M, thereby approaching the asymptotically flat region in which boundary condition problems are less difficult and wave extraction is meaningful.