Simulation of Black Hole Collisions in Asymptotically Anti–de Sitter Spacetimes

We present results from the evolution of spacetimes that describe the merger of asymptotically global AdS black holes in 5D with an SO(3) symmetry. Prompt scalar field collapse provides us with a mechanism for producing distinct trapped regions on the initial slice, associated with black holes initially at rest. We evolve these black holes towards a merger, and follow the subsequent ring-down. The boundary stress tensor of the dual CFT is conformally related to a stress tensor in Minkowski space which inherits an axial symmetry from the bulk SO(3). We compare this boundary stress tensor to its hydrodynamic counterpart with viscous corrections of up to second order, and compare the conformally related stress tensor to ideal hydrodynamic simulations in Minkowski space, initialized at various time slices of the boundary data. Our findings reveal far-from-hydrodynamic behavior at early times, with a transition to ideal hydrodynamics at late times.