Black hole excision for dynamic black holes - art. no. 061501

We extend the previous work on 3D black hole excision to the case of distor ted black holes, with a variety of dynamic gauge conditions that respond na turally to the spacetime dynamics. We show that in evolutions of highly dis torted, rotating black holes, the combination of excision and the gauge con ditions we use is able to drive the coordinates to a frame in which the sys tem looks almost static at late times. Further, we show for the first time that one can extract accurate wave forms from these simulations. with the f ull machinery of excision and dynamic gauge conditions. The evolutions can be carried out for a long time, far exceeding the longevity and accuracy of better resolved 2D codes.