Gravitational waves from relativistic rotational core collapse in axisymmetry

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Abstract
We present results from simulations of axisymmetric relativistic rotational core collapse. The main objective of our investigation is to compute the waveforms of gravitational radiation emitted in such events, extending previous Newtonian simulations to relativity. The general relativistic hydrodynamic equations are formulated in flux-conservative form and solved using a high-resolution shock-capturing scheme. The Einstein equations are solved assuming a conformally flat 3-metric and the quadrupole formula is used to extract waveforms of the gravitational radiation emitted during the collapse. A comparison of our results with those of Newtonian simulations shows that gravitational wave amplitudes agree within 30%. Surprisingly, in some cases, relativistic effects actually diminish the amplitude of the gravitational wave signal. We further find that the parameter range of models suffering multiple coherent bounces due to centrifugal forces is considerably smaller than in Newtonian simulations.