Project

This exercise aims to provide a flavor of the expertise required for the SPIN project as well as giving you an idea of the work expected of you. If you choose to apply to work with me on this project then I will ask you to work through the exercise and send in your results before applying. I will not consider you for the project unless I have received the exercise results. please keep in mind that the exercise mostly serves to give you an idea of the skills required to avoid signing up for more than you can handle.

Modern scientific simulations have enabled us to study non-linear phenomena that are impossible to study otherwise. Among the most challenging problems is the study of Einstein's theory of relativity which predicts the existence of gravitational waves detected very recently be the LIGO collaboration. The Einstein Toolkit is a community driven framework for astrophysical simulations. I am interested in recruiting a student interested in improving the quality of gravitational waveform templates describing colliding black holes produced with the in the Einstein Toolkit.

This project will involve improving the "parameter files" used to set up binary black hole simulations of merging black holes used by the NCSA gravity group. This will involve running simulations on compute clusters at XSEDE and NCSA, visualizing simulation results using VisIt and matplotlib and analyze data using numpy.

The successful applicant will be involved with both the Gravity Group at NCSA and will be invited to participate in the weekly group meetings and discussions of their research projects.

 Preferred skills:

  • Familiarity with Linux command line interface, including ssh
  • Familiarity git command line client
  • Strong working knowledge of Python, matplotlib and numpy

Prerequisites

Setup

Obtain a tutorial account for the Einstein Toolkit tutorial server as described in the "Online Usage" section of the ET tutorial.

Exercise

  • follow the frozen tutorial instructions to simulate a TOV star and produce the plot shown there
    • you will have to copy and paste the cells or upload the frozen tutorial to the tutorial server

Sending in results

Once done, please send me the notebook you used including the output produced to rhaas@illinois.edu as an email attachment

Solution

Your plot should look like the one shown in the frozen tutorial instructions