Bondi’s initial use of null coordinates to describe radiation fields [45] was followed by a rapid
development of other null formalisms. These were distinguished either as metric based approaches, as
developed for axisymmetry by Bondi, Metzner and van der Burg [46] and generalized to 3 dimensions by
Sachs [184
], or as null tetrad approaches in which the Bianchi identities appear as part of the system of
equations, as developed by Newman and Penrose [158].
At the outset, null formalisms were applied to construct asymptotic solutions at null infinity by means of
expansions. Soon afterward, Penrose devised the conformal compactification of null infinity
(“scri”), thereby reducing to geometry the asymptotic quantities describing the physical properties of the
radiation zone, most notably the Bondi mass and news function [166]. The characteristic initial value
problem rapidly became an important tool for the clarification of fundamental conceptual issues regarding
gravitational radiation and its energy content. It laid bare and geometrised the gravitational far
field.
The initial focus on asymptotic solutions clarified the kinematic properties of radiation fields but could
not supply the waveform from a specific source. It was soon realized that instead of carrying out a
expansion, one could reformulate the approach in terms of the integration of ordinary differential equations
along the characteristics (null rays) [209
]. The integration constants supplied on some inner boundary then
determined the specific waveforms obtained at infinity. In the double-null initial value problem of
Sachs [185
], the integration constants are supplied at the intersection of outgoing and ingoing null
hypersurfaces. In the worldtube-nullcone formalism, the sources were represented by integration constants
on a timelike worldtube [209
]. These early formalisms have gone through much subsequent revamping.
Some have been reformulated to fit the changing styles of modern differential geometry. Some
have been reformulated in preparation for implementation as computational algorithms. The
articles in [72] give a representative sample of formalisms. Rather than including a review of the
extensive literature on characteristic formalisms in general relativity, I concentrate here on those
approaches which have been implemented as computational evolution schemes. The existence
and uniqueness of solutions to the associated boundary value problems, which has obvious
relevance to the success of numerical simulations, is treated in a separate Living Review in
Relativity on “Theorems on Existence and Global Dynamics for the Einstein Equations” by
Rendall [179].
All characteristic evolution schemes share the same skeletal form. The fundamental ingredient
is a foliation by null hypersurfaces which are generated by a two-dimensional
set of null rays, labeled by coordinates
, with a coordinate
varying along the rays.
In
null coordinates, the main set of Einstein equations take the schematic form
Computational implementation of characteristic evolution may be based upon different versions of the formalism (i.e. metric or tetrad) and different versions of the initial value problem (i.e. double null or worldtube-nullcone). The performance and computational requirements of the resulting evolution codes can vary drastically. However, most characteristic evolution codes share certain common advantages:
Perhaps most important from a practical view, characteristic evolution codes have shown remarkably robust
stability and were the first to carry out long term evolutions of moving black holes [102].
Characteristic schemes also share as a common disadvantage the necessity either to deal with caustics or
to avoid them altogether. The scheme to tackle the caustics head on by including their development as part
of the evolution is perhaps a great idea still ahead of its time but one that should not be forgotten. There
are only a handful of structurally stable caustics, and they have well known algebraic properties.
This makes it possible to model their singular structure in terms of Padé approximants. The
structural stability of the singularities should in principle make this possible, and algorithms to
evolve the elementary caustics have been proposed [69, 202]. In the axisymmetric case, cusps
and folds are the only structurally stable caustics, and they have already been identified in
the horizon formation occurring in simulations of head-on collisions of black holes and in the
temporarily toroidal horizons occurring in collapse of rotating matter [151, 189]. In a generic
binary black hole horizon, where axisymmetry is broken, there is a closed curve of cusps which
bounds the two-dimensional region on the horizon where the black holes initially form and
merge [144
, 133
].
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