Effect of constraint enforcement on the quality of numerical solutions in general relativity -: art. no. 024021

Brodbeck et al. have shown that the linearized time evolution equations of general relativity can be extended to a system whose solutions asymptotically approach solutions of the constraints. In this paper we extend the nonlinear equations in similar ways and investigate the effects of various possibilities by numerical means. Although we were not able to make the constraint submanifold an attractor for all solutions of the extended system, we were able to significantly reduce the growth of the numerical violation of the constraints. Contrary to our expectations this improvement did not imply a numerical solution closer to the exact solution, and therefore did not improve the quality of the numerical solution.