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Astrophysics, High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, astro-ph.HE,General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology, gr-qc
Abstract:
In the extreme violence of merger and mass accretion, compact objects like
black holes and neutron stars are thought to launch some of the most luminous
outbursts of electromagnetic and gravitational wave energy in the Universe.
Modeling these systems realistically is a central problem in theoretical
astrophysics, but has proven extremely challenging, requiring the development
of numerical relativity codes that solve Einstein's equations for the
spacetime, coupled to the equations of general relativistic (ideal)
magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) for the magnetized fluids. Over the past decade,
the Illinois Numerical Relativity (ILNR) Group's dynamical spacetime, GRMHD
code has proven itself as one of the most robust and reliable tools for
theoretical modeling of such GRMHD phenomena. Despite the code's outstanding
reputation, it was written "by experts and for experts" of the code, with a
steep learning curve that would severely hinder community adoption if it were
open-sourced. Here we present IllinoisGRMHD, which is an open-source,
highly-extensible rewrite of the original closed-source GRMHD code of the ILNR
Group. Reducing the learning curve was the primary focus of this rewrite,
facilitating community involvement in the code's use and development, as well
as the minimization of human effort in generating new science. IllinoisGRMHD
also saves computer time, generating roundoff-precision identical output to the
original code on adaptive-mesh grids, but nearly twice as fast at scales of
hundreds to thousands of cores.
