Collaborative Research: XiRel, A Next Generation Infrastructure for Numerical Relativity

该奖项支持路易斯安那州立大学、宾夕法尼亚州立大学和罗切斯特理工学院的研究人员合作，为大规模模拟引力波源(数值相对论)开发软件基础设施。最近的突破为数值相对论团体提供了为多轨道演化双黑洞的基本技术，包括合并和最终的黑洞衰变阶段。来自这些计算机模拟的信息既有可能增强地面和天基引力波探测器从这些奇异事件中识别这些引力波信号的可能性，也有可能提高在检测到信号时确定这些系统特性的能力。将要开发的基础设施称为XIREL，将建立和集成几个发展良好和广泛使用的计算基础设施和新兴标准，包括仙人掌和地毯。该项目最初和主要的重点是基于现有的地毯驱动程序开发一个高度可扩展、高效和精确的自适应网格精化层，该层将完全集成并支持仙人掌，并针对数值相关性进行优化。该项目将受到科学目标的推动，目的是对黑洞双星进行准确的模拟，初始分离比目前可能的更大，具有不同的质量和自旋，并提供对引力波天文学和天体物理学至关重要的可靠物理结果。该奖项由数学和物理科学局的物理司和计算机和信息科学与工程局的计算和通信基础司支助。

This award supports the development of software infrastructure for large scale simulations of gravitational wave sources (numerical relativity) through a collaboration among researchers at Louisiana State University, Pennsylvania State University, and Rochester Institute of Technology. Recent breakthroughs have provided the numerical relativity community with the basic techniques in to evolve binary black holes for multiple orbits, including the merger and final black hole ring-down phases. Information from these computer simulations have the potential both to enhance the likelihood that ground-based and space-based gravitational wave detectors will recognize these gravitational wave signals from these exotic events and to improve the ability to determine the properties of these systems if signals are detected. The infrastructure to be developed, called XiRel, will build upon and integrate several well developed and widely used computational infrastructures and emerging standards, including Cactus and Carpet. The initial and primary focus of this project is the development of a highly scalable, efficient and accurate adaptive mesh refinement layer based on the existing Carpet driver, which will be fully integrated and supported in Cactus and optimized for numerical relativity. This project will be driven by the scientific goal to perform accurate simulations of black hole binaries with larger initial separations than currently possible, with un-equal masses and unequal spins, and providing reliable physical results critical for gravitational wave astronomy and astrophysics. This award is supported by the Division of Physics in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate and by the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations in the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate.