Equilibrium initial data for moving puncture simulations: the stationary 1 + log slicing

Abstract

We discuss a ‘stationary 1 + log’ slicing condition for the construction of solutions to Einstein's constraint equations. For stationary spacetimes, these initial data give a stationary foliation when evolved with ‘moving puncture’ gauge conditions that are often used in black hole evolutions. The resulting slicing is time independent and agrees with the slicing generated by being dragged along a timelike Killing vector of the spacetime. When these initial data are evolved with moving puncture gauge conditions, numerical errors arising from coordinate evolution should be minimized. While these properties appear very promising, suggesting that this slicing condition should be an attractive alternative to, for example, maximal slicing, we demonstrate in this paper that solutions can be constructed only for a small class of problems. For binary black hole initial data, in particular, it is often assumed that there exists an approximate helical Killing vector that generates the binary's orbit. We show that 1 + log slices that are stationary with respect to such a helical Killing vector cannot be asymptotically flat, unless the spacetime possesses an additional axial Killing vector.