We consider exact solutions for static black holes localized on a three-brane in five-dimensional gravity in the Randall-Sundrum scenario. We show that the Reissner-Nördstrom metric is an exact solution of the effective Einstein equations on the brane, re-interpreted as a black hole without electric charge, but with instead a tidal 'charge' arising via gravitational effects from the fifth dimension. The tidal correction to the Schwarzschild potential is negative, which is impossible in general relativity, and in this case only one horizon is admitted, located outside the Schwarzschild horizon. The solution satisfies a closed system of equations on the brane, and describes the stronggravity regime. Current observations do not strongly constrain the tidal charge, and significant tidal corrections could in principle arise in the strong-gravity regime and for primordial black holes.

We present a numerical study of the time evolution of perturbations of rotating black holes. The solutions are obtained by integrating the Teukolsky equation written as a first-order in time, coupled system of equations, in a form that explicitly captures its hyperbolic structure. We address the numerical difficulties of solving the equation in its original form. We follow the propagation of generic initial data through the burst, quasinormal ringing and power-law tail phases. In particular, we calculate the effects due to the rotation of the black hole on the scattering of incident gravitational wave pulses. These results may help explain how the angular momentum of the black hole affects the gravitational waves that are generated during the final stages of black hole coalescence.

We study the stability of three-dimensional numerical evolutions of the Einstein equations, comparing the standard ADM formulation to variations on a family of formulations that separate out the conformal and traceless parts of the system. We develop an implementation of the conformal-traceless ͑CT͒ approach that has improved stability properties in evolving weak and strong gravitational fields, and for both vacuum and spacetimes with active coupling to matter sources. Cases studied include weak and strong gravitational wave packets, black holes, boson stars and neutron stars. We show under what conditions the CT approach gives better results in 3D numerical evolutions compared to the ADM formulation. In particular, we show that our implementation of the CT approach gives more long term stable evolutions than ADM in all the cases studied, but is less accurate in the short term for the range of resolutions used in our 3D simulations.

Abstract. We present a nite di erence version of the eth formalism, which allows use of tensor elds in spherical coordinates in a manner which avoids polar singularities. The method employs two overlapping stereographic coordinate patches, with interpolations between the patches in the regions of overlap. It provides a new and e ective computational tool for dealing with a wide variety of systems in which spherical coordinates are natural, such as the generation of radiation from an isolated source. We test the formalism with the evolution of waves in three spatial dimensions and the calculation of the curvature scalar of arbitrarily curved geometries on topologically spherical manifolds. The formalism is applied to the solution of the Robinson-Trautman equation and reveals some new features of gravitational waveforms in the nonlinear regime.