A cosmologically motivated reference formulation of numerical relativity

The application of numerical relativity to cosmological spacetimes is providing new insights into the behavior of Einstein’s equations, beyond common approximations. In order for simulations to be performed as accurately and efficiently as possible, we investigate a novel formulation of Einstein’s equations. This formulation evolves differences from a ‘reference’ solution describing the dominant behavior of the spacetime, which mitigates error due to both truncation and approximate finite difference calculations. We find that the error in solutions obtained using the reference formulation can be smaller by an order of magnitude or more, with the level of improvement depending on how well the reference solution approximates the exact solution.