Using comoving, hyperboloidal coordinates to model black hole scattering

Aditya Vaswani (U Southampton)

Jan 13. 2026, 11:30 — 12:00

The self-force community has seen a surge of interest in tackling scattering orbits in recent years, necessitated on the observational side by the need for more precise gravitational wave models and on the theoretical side by recent results in the scattering amplitudes community. The gravitational self-force formalism is based on black hole perturbation theory and is a natural choice for studying scattering, where the smaller object often probes deep into the strong field region of the larger black hole. While previous attempts at numerically modelling this problem were restricted to the scalar field toy model, in this work, I describe how hyperboloidal coordinates that are comoving with the smaller object in a scattering event can be used to tackle the full gravitational problem. I will discuss the numerical implementation of such a scheme along with results for the case of a scalar charge scattering off of a Schwarzschild black hole. Finally, I will show preliminary results for the gravity case and describe the next steps to be undertaken to obtain the gravitational self-force and correction to the scattering angle from these results. 

Further Information
Venue:
ESI Boltzmann Lecture Hall
Recordings:
Recording
Associated Event:
Hyperboloidal Foliations and their Application (Workshop)
Organizer(s):
Roland Donninger (U of Vienna)
David Hilditch (IST Lisboa)
Maciej Maliborski (TU Wien)
Rodrigo Panosso Macedo (NBI, Copenhagen)
Alex Vañó Viñuales (U de Les Illes Balears)
Anil Colpan Zenginoglu (U of Maryland)