Dear Einstein Toolkit users,

We have prepared a new example for the Einstein Toolkit gallery consisting of a simulation of the spacetime of the gravitational wave event GW150914 detected by LIGO in September 2015. The example can be found at

https://einsteintoolkit.org/about/gallery/gw150914

The gallery page consists of a short description, some details of the physics parameters and computational requirements, as well as the parameter file and thornlist. We provide a tutorial for obtaining and compiling the code and running the simulation, which should work on any of the machines supported by SimFactory (http://simfactory.org). We also provide a tutorial for visualising the spacetime using the VisIt visualisation software. Also available is a ~600 MB archive containing a subset of the simulation output, including waveforms and horizon quantities, as well as two time slices of 3D data for visualisation. Lastly, we provide a set of Mathematica notebooks demonstrating how the simulation data can be processed an analysed using the SimulationTools (http://simulationtools.org) software package.

The simulation utilises entirely open and public codes including the Einstein Toolkit and the Llama multiblock infrastructure (http://llamacode.org).

We ask that if you make use of the parameter file or the example data, then please cite the GW150914 Einstein Toolkit example and data [1], the Einstein Toolkit [2], the Llama multi-block infrastructure [3], the Carpet mesh-refinement driver [4], the apparent horizon finder AHFinderDirect [5], the TwoPunctures initial data code [6], QuasiLocalMeasures [7], Cactus [8], and the McLachlan spacetime evolution code [9].

Please let us know if you have any problems; we will be happy to help!

Barry Wardell, Ian Hinder and Eloisa Bentivegna

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[1] Barry Wardell, Ian Hinder and Eloisa Bentivegna. Simulation of GW150914 binary black hole merger using the Einstein Toolkit (doi:10.5281/zenodo.155394)

[2] Frank Löffler, Joshua Faber, Eloisa Bentivegna, Tanja Bode, Peter Diener, Roland Haas, Ian Hinder, Bruno C. Mundim, Christian D. Ott, Erik Schnetter, Gabrielle Allen, Manuela Campanelli, and Pablo Laguna. The Einstein Toolkit: A Community Computational Infrastructure for Relativistic Astrophysics. Classical and Quantum Gravity, 29(11):115001, 2012. (doi:10.1088/0264-9381/29/11/115001)

[3] Denis Pollney, Christian Reisswig, Erik Schnetter, Nils Dorband, Peter Diener. High accuracy binary black hole simulations with an extended wave zone. Phys.Rev. D83 (2011) 044045. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.83.044045)

[4] Erik Schnetter, Scott H. Hawley, and Ian Hawke. Evolutions in 3-D numerical relativity using fixed mesh refinement. Class. Quantum Grav., 21:1465–1488, 2004. (doi:10.1088/0264-9381/21/6/014)

[5] Jonathan Thornburg. A Fast Apparent-Horizon Finder for 3-Dimensional Cartesian Grids in Numerical Relativity. Class. Quantum Grav., 21:743–766, 2004. (doi:10.1088/0264-9381/21/2/026)

[6] Marcus Ansorg, Bernd Brügmann, and Wolfgang Tichy. A single-domain spectral method for black hole puncture data. Phys. Rev. D, 70:064011, 2004. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.70.064011)

[7] Olaf Dreyer, Badri Krishnan, Deirdre Shoemaker, and Erik Schnetter. Introduction to isolated horizons in numerical relativity. Phys. Rev. D, 67:024018, 2003. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.67.024018)

[8] Tom Goodale, Gabrielle Allen, Gerd Lanfermann, Joan Massó, Thomas Radke, Edward Seidel, and John Shalf. The Cactus framework and toolkit: Design and applications. In Vector and Parallel Processing – VECPAR'2002, 5th International Conference, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Berlin, 2003. Springer.

[9] J. David Brown, Peter Diener, Olivier Sarbach, Erik Schnetter, and Manuel Tiglio. Turduckening black holes: an analytical and computational study. Phys. Rev. D, 79:044023, 2009. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.79.044023)