Three-dimensional Einstein-Klein-Gordon system in characteristic numerical relativity -: art. no. 064028

We incorporate a massless scalar field into a three-dimensional code for the characteristic evolution of the gravitational field. The extended three-dimensional code for the Einstein-Klein-Gordon system is calibrated to be second-order convergent. It provides an accurate calculation of the gravitational and scalar radiation at infinity. As an application, we simulate the fully nonlinear evolution of an asymmetric scalar pulse of ingoing radiation propagating toward an interior Schwarzschild black hole and compute the backscattered scalar and gravitational outgoing radiation patterns. The amplitudes of the scalar and gravitational outgoing radiation modes exhibit the predicted power law scaling with respect to the amplitude of the initial data. For the scattering of an axisymmetric scalar field, the final ring down matches the complex frequency calculated perturbatively for the l = 2 quasinormal mode.