COMBINING CAUCHY AND CHARACTERISTIC CODES - V - CAUCHY-CHARACTERISTICMATCHING FOR A SPHERICAL SPACETIME CONTAINING A PERFECT FLUID - ART. NO. 044019

This paper is part of a long term program to develop CCM (combined Cau chy and characteristic) codes as investigative tools in numerical rela tivity. The approach has two distinct features: (i) it dispenses with an outer boundary condition and replaces this with matching conditions at an interface between the Cauchy and characteristic regions, and (i i) by employing a compactified coordinate, it proves possible to gener ate global solutions. In this paper it is shown that CCM can be used e ffectively to model a spherically symmetric perfect fluid. A particula r advantage of CCM in avoiding arbitrary mass inflow-outflow boundary conditions is pointed out. Results are presented which include fluid d istributions which form black holes and those which give rise to mass outflow. [S0556-2821(98)06516-3].