Release Announcement
We are pleased to announce the twenty-first release (code name “DeWitt-Morette”) of the Einstein Toolkit, an open-source, community developed software infrastructure for relativistic astrophysics. The highlights of this release are:
* This release includes NRPyPN, a Python code to compute initial data parameters for binary black hole simulations.
* Lean_Public supports curvilinear coordinates provided by Llama.
* The include style (“old”) Tmunu interface using thorn ADMCoupling has been removed.
One new thorn has been added:
* ReadInterpolate, a FileReader like thorn that uses InterolateLocalUniform to interpolate the data read in onto the new grid.
In addition, bug fixes accumulated since the previous release in May 2020 have been included.
The Einstein Toolkit is a collection of software components and tools for simulating and analyzing general relativistic astrophysical systems that builds on numerous software efforts in the numerical relativity community including code to compute initial data parameters, the spacetime evolution codes Baikal, lean_public, and McLachlan, analysis codes to compute horizon characteristics and gravitational waves, the Carpet AMR infrastructure, and the relativistic magneto-hydrodynamics codes GRHydro and IllinoisGRMHD. The Einstein Toolkit also contains a 1D self-force code. For parts of the toolkit, the Cactus Framework is used as the underlying computational infrastructure providing large-scale parallelization, general computational components, and a model for collaborative, portable code development.
The Einstein Toolkit uses a distributed software model and its different modules are developed, distributed, and supported either by the core team of Einstein Toolkit Maintainers, or by individual groups. Where modules are provided by external groups, the Einstein Toolkit Maintainers provide quality control for modules for inclusion in the toolkit and help coordinate support. The Einstein Toolkit Maintainers currently involve staff and faculty from five different institutions, and host weekly meetings that are open for anyone to join.
Guiding principles for the design and implementation of the toolkit include: open, community-driven software development; well thought-out and stable interfaces; separation of physics software from computational science infrastructure; provision of complete working production code; training and education for a new generation of researchers.
For more information about using or contributing to the Einstein Toolkit, or to join the Einstein Toolkit Consortium, please visit our web pages at http://einsteintoolkit.org, or contact the users mailing list users[AT]einsteintoolkit.org.
The Einstein Toolkit is primarily supported by NSF 2004157/2004044/2004311/2004879/2003893 (Enabling fundamental research in the era of multi-messenger astrophysics).
Roland Haas, Steven R. Brandt, Rahime Matur, Beyhan Karakas, William E. Gabella, Miguel Gracia
November, 2020