[Users] New Einstein Toolkit Release (Mayer)

[Steven R. Brandt]

Release Announcement

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

A new thorn has been added:

  * FishboneMoncriefID

Also, for the first time, a new code has been added.

  * SelfForce-1D

The ETK is embracing a new model of assigning credit: Until now, the 2012
Einstein Toolkit paper was the common way to cite the Einstein Toolkit
(though we suggested citing the website itself). In this release, however,
we will begin using https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3522086 to recognize the
many contributers that have worked on the toolkit since that time.

In principle, the Einstein Toolkit was always intended to be a 
collection of
codes for exploring numerical relativity, not simply a collection of
arrangements and thorns for the Cactus Framework. Going forward,
SelfForce-1D will have regular releases using the same release tags as the
Cactus-based codes, and will have a similar setup for the running of
test-suites. While the new code will not download at the same time as the
Cactus-based code, download instructions will appear in the same places.

In addition, bug fixes accumulated since the previous release in March 2019
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 the spacetime evolution codes McLachlan and Lean, analysis codes
to compute horizon characteristics and gravitational waves, 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 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 Fishbone Moncrief Initial Data thorn (FishboneMoncriefID) thorn has
    been added to the WVUThorns arrangement
    - This thorn solves the equations originally posed by Fishbone &
      Moncrief, describing a non-self-gravitating equilibrium disk of 
matter
      orbiting a spinning black hole in standard (spherical) Kerr-Schild
      coordinates. When the disk is seeded with initially dynamically
      unimportant poloidal magnetic fields, dramatic magnetic instabilities
      occur during the subsequent evolution, launching ultrarelativistic
      jets. Thus the Fishbone-Moncrief solution provides a standard testbed
      for GRMHD accretion disk codes.
    - From a code perspective, FishboneMoncriefID is notable in that it is
      the first ETK thorn entirely written and documented within 
pedagogical
      Jupyter notebooks. In these notebooks, the Fishbone-Moncrief 
equations
      are converted from Einstein-like notation into optimized C code using
      NRPy+, a Kranc analogue depending only on Python and its open-source
      SymPy computer algebra software.
  * The inclusion of the SelfForce-1D code in the Einstein Toolkit as the
    first non-Cactus code in the toolkit.
    - Evolves the sourced scalar wave equation on a Schwarzschild spacetime
      using the effective source approach to point particles.
    - The wave equation is decomposed into spherical harmonics and the
      resulting 1+1 dimensional equations are discretized in the radial
      direction using the discontinuous Galerkin method.
  * Update hwloc to 1.11.12
  * Groups of vectors of vectors are now handled properly by
    RotatingSymmetry90 and RotatingSymmetry180
  * Compilation of PAPI is faster and produces fewer warnings


How to upgrade from Proca (ET_2019_03)

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.html) on the
Einstein Toolkit website for download instructions.

As the SelfForce-1D code was not present in the previous release, there is
no need to upgrade. Just follow the download instructions.

Machine notes

Supported (tested) machines include:

  * Default Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS 7, Mint, OpenSUSE and MacOS 
Mojave
    (MacPorts) installations
  * Bluewaters
  * Comet
  * Cori
  * Stampede 2
  * Mike

  * 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_10
marking this release. These release branches will be updated if severe
errors are found.

The "Mayer" Release Team on behalf of the Einstein Toolkit Consortium
(2019-10-25)

  * Steven R. Brandt
  * Maria Babiuc-Hamilton
  * Peter Diener
  * Matthew Elley
  * Zachariah Etienne
  * Giuseppe Ficarra
  * Roland Haas
  * Helvi Witek

Oct, 2019