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Abstract

In most approaches to numerical relativity it is very difficult to determine global properties of spacetimes since typically only finite regions of spacetime are evaluated. But global properties are of major interest for many fields of general relativity, e.g. cosmic censorship (existence and location of event horizons) and gravitational radiation (whose definition and determination requires knowledge of the geometry at null infinity). In this talk I will briefly outline an approach using conformal techniques to calculate global properties. The advantages of this method are demonstrated using two examples, the determination of event horizons and the decay of radiation. The calculations have been performed with a spherically symmetric spacetime using a conformal scalar field as radiation and matter model.