A new general purpose event horizon finder for 3D numerical spacetimes

Abstract

I present a new general purpose event horizon finder for full 3D numerical spacetimes. It works by evolving a complete null surface backwards in time. The null surface is described as the zero level set of a scalar function, that in principle is defined everywhere. This description of the surface allows the surface, trivially, to change topology, making this event horizon finder able to handle numerical spacetimes, where two (or more) black holes merge into a single final black hole.