The Einstein Toolkit is an infrastructure that enables modeling in relativistic astrophysics, with particular emphasis in sources of gravitational radiation. This platform is currently being used by dozens of researchers across the world. The proposed workshop aims at training the new generation of users/developers, most of which are currently graduate students. The workshop is an essential tool for keeping the ET community connected and up to date, as well as a way to identify new developmental opportunties.
This grant included funding to support the participation of scientists to theEinstein Toolkit Beginner User Workshop 2012. The Einstein Toolkit is an open-source, general relativistic multi-physics infrastructure for relativistic astrophysics. Specifically, the toolkit enables modeling sources of gravitational radiation requiring multi-physics and multi-scale high performance computing, sources such as stellar core collapse, gamma-ray bursts engines, and compact object mergers. The meeting was conceived with the following goals in mind: To provide a venue for new users to discuss their individual needs. To allow for hands-on training of new users by experts and developers. To foster a discussion of the future directions for the Einstein Toolkit. To carry out hands-on code development and testing. The meeting encouraged communication and critical evaluation of efforts and methodologies across the broad spectrum of research in gravitational wave astrophysics. It provided an environment that promoted synergistic collaborations among researchers from the astrophysics, data analysis and numerical relativity communities. It provided a collaborative tool model to evaluate the status of the Einstein Toolkit effort, assess its methodologies and identify transformative opportunities. The New Users Einstein Toolkit Workshop 2012 was the success we hoped it would be. It provided an opportunity to learn about computer science, numerical relativity, high-performance computing and the Einstein Toolkit. It provoked many interesting discussions, especially between the participants themselves and students of different disciplines (notably computer science and physics/astronomy). This past workshop will pose as a model for future workshops of the same format, and in fact the experience and materials created at the workshop were already used within another new users introduction on the Einstein Toolkit within the NR/HEP2 Spring School in Lisbon, Portugal (11-14 March, 2013).
