[Users] New Einstein Toolkit Release (Proca)

[Steven R. Brandt]

== Release Announcement ==

We are pleased to announce the eighteenth release (code name "Proca") of the
Einstein Toolkit, an open, community developed software infrastructure for
relativistic astrophysics. The highlights of this release are:

New arrangements and thorns have been added:

* Proca
     - NPScalars_Proca
     - ProcaBase
     - ProcaEvolve
     - Proca_simpleID
     - TwoPunctures_KerrProca
* lean_public
     - LeanBSSNMoL
     - NPScalars
* wvuthorns_diagnostics
     - particle_tracerET
     - Seed_Magnetic_Fields_BNS
     - smallbPoynET
     - VolumeIntegrals_GRMHD
     - VolumeIntegrals_vacuum

In addition, bug fixes accumulated since the previous release in 
September 2018
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
CactusEinstein, the Carpet AMR infrastructure and the relativistic
magneto-hydrodynamics codes GRHydro and IllinoisGRMHD. 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
toolkit includes modules to build complete codes for simulating black hole
spacetimes as well as systems governed by relativistic 
magneto-hydrodynamics.

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 postdocs and faculty from
six different institutions, and host weekly meetings that are open for 
anyone
to join in.

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.

The Einstein Toolkit is primarily supported by NSF
1550551/1550461/1550436/1550514 (Einstein Toolkit Community Integration and
Data Exploration).

The Einstein Toolkit contains about 400 regression test cases.  On a large
portion of the tested machines, almost all of these tests pass, using 
both MPI
and OpenMP parallelization.

The changes between this and the previous release include:

== Larger changes since last release ==

* The Proca arrangement has been added: This repository provides the 
tools to
* evolve the Einstein-Proca system as first described in
* https://arxiv.org/abs/1505.00797.
     - NPScalars_Proca: Implementation of the spin-1 (electromagnetic) and
       spin-2 (gravitational) Newman-Penrose scalars
     - Proca_simpleID: Create analytic initial data for a non-rotating black
       hole surrounded by a Proca field with mass mu.
     - TwoPunctures_KerrProca: A modified TwoPunctures thorn to construct
       initial data for a single rotating black hole coupled to a 
massive vector
       field.
* The Lean arrangement has been added:
     - LeanBSSNMoL: Implementation to evolve Einstein's Equations using the
       W-version of the BSSN formulation together with the puncture 
gauge. Also
       available, in the "new_gauge" branch, is a modified 
"Gamma-driver" that
       stabilizes highly rotating black hole spacetimes (adapted from 
Figueras
       et al; see: https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.04532).
     - NPScalars: Implementation of the spin-2 Newman-Penrose scalars
* The WVU Diagnostics arrangement has been added: These thorns are designed
* primarily to add useful diagnostics for binary neutron star simulations
* performed with IllinoisGRMHD.
     - NSNS_parameter_files Contains parameter files for magnetized and
       unmagnetized BNS evolutions.
     - Seed_Magnetic_Fields_BNS Extended Seed_Magnetic_Fields thorn for 
binary
       neutron stars.
     - VolumeIntegrals_GRMHD: GRMHD volume integration thorn, currently 
depends
       on IllinoisGRMHD and Carpet. Performs volume integrals on arbitrary
       "Swiss-cheese"-like topologies, and even interoperates with Carpet to
       track NS centers of mass.
     - VolumeIntegrals_vacuum: Same functionality as 
VolumeIntegrals_GRMHD, but
       designed for integration of spacetime quantities. Depends on 
ML_BSSN and
       ADMBase for integrands.
     - particle_tracerET Solves the ODE \partial_t x^i = v^i for typically
       thousands of tracer particles, using an RK4 integration atop the 
current
       time stepping.
     - smallbPoynET Computes b^i, b^2, and three spatial components of 
Poynting
       flux. It also computes (-1-u_0), which is useful for tracking unbound
       matter.
* Ticket tracking system moved to bitbucket:
* https://bitbucket.org/einsteintoolkit/tickets/ Subversion 
infrastructure for
* thorns is no longer maintained at LSU. Instead, the svn checkout mechanism
* supported by github.com is used. Llama supports tensorweights other 
than 1.0
* or 0.0 Added EinsteinAnalysis/Hydro_Analysis/Hydro_Analysis_Masses.F90 in
* order to compute the total baryonic mass and baryonic mass within user
* defined radii. A summary of changes Carpet:
     - add support for very large grids where 64bit integer are needed 
for grid
       indices and sizes of transfer buffers
     - fix how physical_time_per_hour is computed
     - add functionality to align interior of grid functions to cache
       boundaries. This requires changes to Cactus and PUGH as well.
     - add a parameter "granularity" to make sure the interior of 
components is
       a multiple of N points in each direction
* The version of MPI bundled with the ET is now OpenMPI 1.10.7 The
* SystemTopology thorn now supports hwloc 2.0

== How to upgrade from Chien-Shiung Wu (ET_2018_09) ==

To upgrade from the previous release, use GetComponents with the new 
thornlist
to check out the new version.

See the Download page (http://einsteintoolkit.org/download/) on the
Einstein Toolkit website for download instructions.

== Machine notes ==

Supported (tested) machines include:

- Default Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, Mint, OpenSUSE and MacOS 
(MacPorts) installations
- Bluewaters
- Comet
- Golub
- Stampede 2
- Shelob
- Wheeler

* TACC machines: defs.local.ini needs to have sourcebasedir = $WORK
   and basedir = $SCRATCH/simulations configured for this machine. You
   need to determine $WORK and $SCRATCH by logging in to the machine.

All repositories participating in this release carry a branch ET_2019_03
marking this release.  These release branches will be updated if severe
errors are found.

The "Proca" Release Team on behalf of the Einstein Toolkit Consortium
(2019‐03‐29)

* Steven R. Brandt
* Samuel D. Cupp
* Peter Diener
* Zachariah Etienne
* Roland Haas
* Helvi Witek

Mar, 2019