Abstract

The collision of black holes is a classic problem in the strong-field regime of general relativity. In the context of AdS/CFT, this process translates to a statement about the boundary field theory’s stress tensor: two compact lumps of energy density approach each other from some initial separation, merge, and relax towards the boundary dual of the final state black hole in the bulk. The main purpose of this talk is to outline the ongoing program to work out the details of this picture, via numerical Cauchy evolution of black hole collisions in AdS. I will begin by motivating this program in terms of the heavy-ion physics it is intended to clarify, then give an overview of the setup, and the generalized harmonic method we use to solve the Einstein field equations with a negative cosmological constant. As a concrete example of these ideas, I will describe recent work to remove all simplifying symmetries in black hole collision simulations on a Poincare patch of AdS.