Group Resources

Matt Choptuik manages the public distribution of most of the software we use, and many of the links below are links to his web-page.

Software

See here for some documentation, installation instructions, etc. on the software tools mentioned below.

Visualization tools :
xvs for 1D data sets, DV for 2D and 3D data sets. GUI's built with the xforms library.

Numerical analysis tools :
RNPL (Rapid Numerical Prototyping Langauge) : language that produces programs to solve certain classes of hyperbolic PDEs.
PAMR (Parallel Adaptive Mesh Refinement) : a library managing distributed grid hierarchies in a parallel (MPI) environment.
AMRD (Adaptive Mesh Refinement Driver) : a library, built on top of PAMR, implementing a Berger and Oliger style AMR driver.

Unix Notes. At present the above software can only be compiled and run on Unix/Linux based systems.

Numerical Methods

Lecture notes, by Matt Choptuik, given at the Taller de Verano 1999 summer school. This is an excellent introduction to the basic finite difference techniques we use to solve hyperbolic PDEs.

Numerical Recipes is available on-line, which is a good reference for many topics.

Projects and Tutorials

How to solve hyperbolic PDEs via numerical methods (tutorial developed by Bogdan Stoica)

An introduction to Nbody codes and the Barnes-Hut algorithm (tutorial developed by Tim Koby)

Lecture notes and projects (variants of projects 1 and 2 below) for the PiTP Computational Astrophysics Summer School, 2009

Project 1: Scalar Wave Evolution on a Schwarzschild Background

The following project is one of the problems given at the Graduate Summer School on General Relativistic Hydrodynamics, in Vancouver, 2003.

Project Handout

Using the following as a template for this project:

How to solve a 1D flat space wave equation with RNPL. Code: w1dcnm.tar.gz

Project 2: Gravitational collapse in the Einstein-Klein-Gordon system

Project Handout

Use your code from Project 1 as a skeleton to begin Project 2.
Source and Makefile for model elliptic problem: model_elliptic.f, Makefile


RNPL source, Makefile and sample ID file demonstrating how to add Kreiss Oliger dissipation to the Klein-Gordon equation in spherically symmetric Minkowksi spacetime: kg_rnpl, Makefile, id0

Some of the material presented here is based upon work supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0745779

last updated: April 1, 2011