User: barry.wardell Date: 2016/06/05 05:07 PM

Modified: /about/gallery/gw150914/ index.php

Log: GW150914 gallery: Add some text describing the simulation

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Directory: /about/gallery/gw150914/ ===================================

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-<p>As observed by LIGO; the first detection of gravitational waves</p> +<p>On February 11, 2016, the <a href="http://www.ligo.org/">LIGO collaboration</a> <a +href="http://www.ligo.org/news/detection-press-release.pdf%22%3Eannounced</a> that they had achieved +the first ever direct detection of gravitational waves. The gravitational waves – which were +detected by both LIGO detectors on September 14, 2015 at 09:51 UTC – were generated over a billion +years ago by the merger of a binary black hole system. The announcement came along with the +simultaneous publication of a peer-reviewed paper [<a +href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102%22%3EPhys. Rev. Lett. 116, 061102</a>]; several +other papers giving technical details; and a full release of the <a +href="https://losc.ligo.org/events/GW150914/%22%3Edata from the detection</a>, which has been given the +name GW150914.

- <p>This simulation shows how to evolve a binary black hole system for the last 6 orbits through to merger. </p> +<p>The <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1602.03840">LIGO analysis</a> found that the merger consisted +of a 36 + 29 solar mass binary black hole system, the remnant was a 62 solar mass black hole, and +the remaining 3 solar masses were radiated as gravitational waves. This simulation shows how to use +the Einstein Toolkit to evolve the last 6 orbits and merger of a binary black hole system with +parameters that match the GW150914 event. Along with the associated tutorials, it shows how to +extract waveforms and other physical properties from the simulated spacetime; how to visualise the +3D data generated by the simulation; and how to produce a numerical relativity waveform of the kind +that may be used for the analysis of LIGO signals.</p>

+<p>A subset of the simulation data &mdash; including everything required to follow the VisIt and +SimulationTools tutorials without having to run the simulation &mdash; is available for downloaded +below. The full simulation output additionally includes multiple resolutions and considerable 2D +and 3D output, and totals several terabytes in size; as such it will be made available for download +once a suitable distribution method has been found.</p> + <div style="display:inline-block; margin-right: 20px"> <h4>Physical parameters</h4> <table>