LSU’s numerical relativity group will host a workshop March 8-10 at LSU's Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, giving University faculty and research staff an opportunity to collaborate with international partners and work toward improving a computer code the group developed to study black hole systems.
When a black hole develops close to another black hole, or when a black hole passes close enough to another black hole, they can form a single system, called a Black Hole Binary. When this happens, the two black holes spiral around each other, moving closer and faster until they finally merge and become a single black hole, sending ripples of gravitational waves across the universe. These mergers are one of the phenomena studied in LSU’s numerical relativity group.
The numerical relativity group at LSU is partnered with a similar research group at the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany, and the two groups periodically hold workshops to give researchers from both institutions time to work together in one location on particular aspects of their projects. Recently, members of numerical relativity research groups at Caltech and Universitat de les Illes Balears in Palma, Spain also have become collaborators.
In this particular workshop, researchers will improve the accuracy and precision of Llama, a computer code the group developed and uses to perform simulations of binary black hole systems. Members of the LSU and Albert Einstein Institute numerical relativity research groups created the Llama code in 2008, and the group has used it for research since early 2009.
Llama uses Cactus , an open-source software framework that originated at the Albert Einstein Institute, and that is now also being developed at Louisiana State University, among other research institutions. Cactus has been supporting research in astrophysics and other areas of science for more than 10 years. To date, Llama is one of the most accurate codes used to study binary black holes. The workshop participants expect that the improvements made during this workshop will make Llama more efficient for a series of planned calculations to help identify and detect gravitational waves emitted in binary black hole systems.
Erik Schnetter, a researcher with CCT and the LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy, organized the Llama 2010 workshop together with Ian Hinder from the Albert Einstein Institute. Participants from LSU and the three collaborating sites, Caltech, Universitat de les Illes Balears and Albert Einstein institute, will attend the workshop.
The Llama code improvements as well as other relativistic astrophysics research projects the groups are conducting have received grant funding from several sources. Schnetter and CCT and LSU Department of Computer Science Professor Gabrielle Allen received $2 million from the National Science Foundation through four different grant awards to address this and other challenges in astrophysics in a comprehensive manner.
The Llama 2010 workshop applies to these research projects, and is partly funded by these grants and by CCT’s Coast to Cosmos Focus Area.
Publish Date:
03-03-2010
