Numerical hydrodynamics on light cones

Abstract

Characteristic methods show excellent promise in the evolution of single black hole spacetimes. The effective coupling with matter fields may help the numerical exploration of important astrophysical systems such as neutron star black hole binaries. To this end we investigate formalisms for numerical relativistic hydrodynamics which can be adaptable to null (characteristic) foliations of the spacetime. The feasibility of the procedure is demonstrated with one-dimensional results on the evolution of self-gravitating matter accreting onto a dynamical black hole.