Gravitational-Wave Extraction from an Inspiraling Configuration of Merging Black Holes

We present new techniqes for evolving binary black hole systems which allowthe accurate determination of gravitational waveforms directly from the wavezone region of the numerical simulations. Rather than excising the black holeinteriors, our approach follows the "puncture" treatment of black holes, bututilzing a new gauge condition which allows the black holes to movesuccessfully through the computational domain. We apply these techniques to aninspiraling binary, modeling the radiation generated during the final plungeand ringdown. We demonstrate convergence of the waveforms and good conservationof mass-energy, with just over 3% of the system's mass converted to gravitionalradiation.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure