Phd Student
Max-Planck-Institut Fuer Gravitationsphysik
Numerical simulation of binary black hole spacetimes and a novel approach to boundary conditions.I worked extensively on super-computer simulations of relativistic space-times, and on a framework for numerical simulation called the Einstein Toolkit. Gravitational Wave (GW) detectors need numerical GW templates for signal recognition by detector pipelines, and binary black hole in-spirals are the strongest source for GW signals. My research focused on improving simulations, and on the generation of numerical GWs both for detector templates and for astrophysical predictions. I developed and tested massively parallel numerical simulations that evolve highly non-linear partial differential equations (the Einstein Equations) for close binary black holes as part of a large-scale collaborative “toolkit” written in C++/Fortran/Python. I helped develop multiple ”thorns” for Cactus and the Einstein toolkit, including: the AEIHarmonic evolution code for evolving full 3D evolutions of the Einstein Equations; two well-posed, constraint preserving boundary conditions thorns for two different coordinate systems; Teukolsky Wave initial data thorn; multiple visualization thorns; many analysis thorns, including horizon mass estimation, and spin orientation analysis I contributed to the adaptive mesh refinement project, Carpet, HDF5 I/O for Amira, VisIt and OpenDX, memory allocation, parallelization with MPI and OpenMP, scalability, overall C++ optimization, and cross architecture compatibility. For analysis I use Python, R, Gnuplot, Octave, Matlab, Mathematica, or Maple. The scripting for simulation management and analysis I usually use Python, Ruby, bash, or Perl. For versioning we used svn, then darcs, then git.
