Numerical relativity for future gravitational-wave observatories

Gravitational waves are ripples of warped spacetime that travel at the speed of light. Since they were first detected passing through Earth in 2015, gravitational waves have opened a new window on the universe's most extreme phenomena, such as merging black holes and neutron stars. In the next decade, a new generation of gravitational-wave observatories will extend our gravitational-wave sensitivity to the edge of the observable universe while observing the loudest waves with exquisite precision. Learning as much as we can from gravitational-wave observations requires models of the waves and their sources that rely on numerical relativity—solving Einstein's equations of general relativity on computers. The new observatories planned to come online in the 2030s will be so sensitive that they will require much more accurate numerical-relativity models. In this talk, I will introduce numerical relativity and ongoing work to prepare for the next generation of gravitational-wave detectors. I will also discuss the Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes collaboration's ongoing work to develop SpECTRE, a new, open-source numerical-relativity code aiming to model gravitational-wave sources at the accuracy that future detectors will need.