Cauchy-Characteristic Matching

Abstract

Throughout his career in theoretical gravitational physics, Vishu has been interested in questions of black holes and gravitational radiation. The subject of his useful early study of radiation from binary systems [1] is now at the forefront of research as the principal target for the first exciting experimental measurements of the LIGO project. His fundamental studies of the properties of black hole excitations and radiation [2] used the formidable technology of the mid 1960’s, i.e. Regge-Wheeler perturbation theory, to analytically extract the crucial physical result that black holes were stable. In his continuing studies of the interaction of black holes with gravitational radiation [3], he first demonstrated the phenomenon that was later to be called normal mode excitations of black holes, and noted that the frequency of the emitted radiation carried with it key information which could be used to determine the mass of the invisible black hole. These issues are still at the heart of current research three decades later.