Analytical representation of a black hole puncture solution

The "moving-puncture" technique has led to dramatic advancements in the numerical simulations of binary black holes. Hannam et al. have recently demonstrated that, for suitable gauge conditions commonly employed in moving-puncture simulations, the evolution of a single black hole leads to a well-known, time-independent, maximal slicing of Schwarzschild spacetime. They construct the corresponding solution in isotropic coordinates numerically and demonstrate its usefulness, for example, for testing and calibrating numerical codes that employ moving-puncture techniques. In this brief report we point out that this solution can also be constructed analytically, making it even more useful as a test case for numerical codes. © 2007 The American Physical Society.