Binary Black Hole Grand Challenge

A close-up view of the coalescence of the two black holes from the previous page. The white lines are the null generators of the event horizon.

Project Overview

The Binary Black Hole Grand Challenge project is a collaboration between Numerical Relativists and Computer Scientists at eight institutions. The goal of this grand challenge, as mentioned in the previous page, is to solve the problem of the 3D spiraling coalescence of two black holes. The overall project is divided into several components each of which is worked on by each institution or a group of institutions. Each of these components deals with various aspects of the project. The following is a breakdown:

Computer Science Products

• Interface Definition
• Scientist Tools
• Data Structures
• Parallel Implementations
• Adaptive Multilevel Support
• Template Code Writer
• Descriptor Language
• File Transfer Protocols

Computational Science (Relativity) Products

• Initial Data Codes
• 2-D Spacelike Codes
• 2-D Null Codes
• 3-D Spacelike Codes
• 3-D Null Codes
• Spacelike-Null interface
• Adaptive Multilevel 3-D Codes

Organizational Products

• MOU
• E-mail
• Phone
• Meetings
• Advisory Committee
• Cognizant Scientists
• Software Librarian
• Newsletter
• Net Phone
• Net Video
• Mosaic

Physics Support

• Wave Extraction
• Perturbation Theory
• Comparison to PPN Data.
• Boundary Layers
• High Accuracy Wave Prediction

• Binary Black Hole Grand Challenge Alliance (Participating Institutions)
• Characteristic Null Evolutions
• Computational Toolkit for Numerical Relativity and Data Structures
• Related Information on LIGO (LIGO Home Page)