The Einstein Toolkit is a collection of software components and tools for simulating and analyzing general relativistic astrophysical systems. Such systems include gravitational wave space-times, collisions of compact objects such as black holes or neutron stars, accretion onto compact objects, core collapse supernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursts.
The Einstein Toolkit builds on numerous software efforts in the numerical relativity community including CactusEinstein, Whisky, and Carpet. The Einstein Toolkit currently uses the Cactus Framework as the underlying computational infrastructure that provides large-scale parallelization, general computational components, and a model for collaborative, portable code development.
The Toolkit includes a set of mix-and-match components (or Thorns) that support the development of codes for relativistic astrophysics. A number of full examples provide prototype, production examples of complete astrophysical codes including black hole spacetimes and relativistic hydrodynamical spacetimes. There is also a step-by-step tutorial for new users.