Abstract

Both observations and deeply theoretical considerations indicate that general relativity, our elegant standard model of gravity, requires modifications at high curvatures scales. Candidate theories of quantum gravity, in their low-energy limit, typically predict couplings to additional fields or extensions that involve higher curvature terms.

At the same time, the breakthrough discovery of gravitational waves has provided a new channel to probe gravity in its most extreme, strong-field regime. Modelling the expected gravitational radiation in these extensions of general relativity enables us to search for – or place novel observational bounds on – deviations from our standard model. In this talk I will give an overview of the recent progress on simulating binary collisions in these situations and address renewed mathematical challenges such as well-posedness of the underlying initial value formulation.