Black hole mergers: beyond general relativity

One hundred years after the birth of general relativity, advanced LIGO has finally directly detected gravitational waves. The source: two black holes merging into one. Advanced LIGO will soon provide the opportunity to test GR, using gravitational waves, in the dynamical strong-field regime---a setting where GR has not yet been tested. GR has passed all weak-field tests with flying colors. Yet it should eventually break down, so we must look to the strong-field. To perform strong-field tests of GR, we need waveform models from theories \emph{beyond} GR. To date there are no numerical simulations of black hole mergers in theories which differ from GR. The main obstacle is the mathematical one of well-posedness. I will explain how to overcome this obstacle, and demonstrate the success of this approach by presenting the first numerical simulations of black hole mergers in a theory beyond GR.