The gravitational wave strain in the characteristic formalism of numerical relativity

Abstract: The extraction of the gravitational wave signal, within the context of a characteristic numerical evolution is revisited. A formula for the gravitational wave strain is developed and tested, and is made publicly available as part of the PITT code within the Einstein Toolkit. Using the new strain formula, we show that artificial non-linear drifts inherent in time integrated waveforms can be reduced for the case of a binary black hole merger configuration. For the test case of a rapidly spinning stellar core collapse model, however, we find that the drift must have different roots.