Boundary conditions for the Baumgarte-Shapiro-Shibata-Nakamura formulation of Einstein's field equations

Abstract

We discuss the initial-boundary value problem for the Baumgarte-Shapiro-Shibata-Nakamura evolution system of Einstein's field equations which has been used extensively in numerical simulations of binary black holes and neutron stars. We specify nine boundary conditions for this system with the following properties: (i) they impose the momentum constraint at the boundary, which is shown to preserve all the constraints throughout evolution, (ii) they approximately control the incoming gravitational degrees of freedom by specifying the Weyl scalar Psi_0 at the boundary, (iii) they control the gauge freedom by requiring a Neumann boundary condition for the lapse, by setting the normal component of the shift to zero, and by imposing a Sommerfeld-like condition on the tangential components of the shift, (iv) they are shown to yield a well-posed problem in the limit of weak gravity. Possible numerical applications of our results are also discussed briefly.