Simulation of GW150914 binary black hole merger using the Einstein Toolkit

<p>On February 11, 2016, the LIGO collaboration announced that they had achieved the first ever direct detection of gravitational waves. The gravitational waves – which were detected by both LIGO detectors on September 14, 2015 at 09:51 UTC – were generated over a billion years ago by the merger of a binary black hole system. The announcement came along with the simultaneous publication of a peer-reviewed paper [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102]; several other papers giving technical details; and a full release of the data from the detection, which has been given the name GW150914.</p> <p>The LIGO analysis found that the merger consisted of a 36 + 29 solar mass binary black hole system, the remnant was a 62 solar mass black hole, and the remaining 3 solar masses were radiated as gravitational waves. This dataset represents a subset of the data from a simulation in which the Einstein Toolkit was used to evolve the last 6 orbits and merger of a binary black hole system with parameters that match the GW150914 event.</p> <p>More details on the simulation, including instructions for how to run it and how to analyse the data can be found in the Einstein Toolkit gallery at http://einsteintoolkit.org/about/gallery/gw150914/.</p>