Resources

Research helps

• Some relevant GR references

  • Review article on black hole critical phenomena by Carsten Gundlach.
  • Lecture notes for an introductory general relativity course by Sean Carroll.
  • Review article on black holes by Paul Townsend.
  • Brief, but nice introduction to the Einstein equations  by John Baez.
  • Lecture notes by Matt Choptuik on the 3+1 ADM decomposition of the Einstein equations. This approach is the standard starting point for most numerical relativists.

• Computational tools

  • Finite differencing techniques
  • RNPL (Rapid Numerical Prototyping Language) is a language for expressing time-dependent systems of PDEs using finite-difference techniques. Basic information with examples is in Robert Marsa's thesis. Supplementary information is here: //laplace.physics.ubc.ca/~matt/Rnpl/index.html.
  • Seris a visualization program built by Matt Choptuik to analyze 1-dimensional time dependent data. Documentation and information on its use:
    • Choptuik's overview: laplace.physics.ubc.ca/~matt/Software/ser/intro.html
    • Shoemaker's usage notes: godel.ph.utexas.edu/Members/deirdre/ser_doc.html
    • Liebling's usage notes: godel.ph.utexas.edu/Members/steve/research/tools.html#SERHELP.
  • A java variant of ser is jser. Basic information on it is at intro.
  • Some FORTRANtutorials
    • A basic Fortran 77 introduction: personal.cfw.com/~terry2/tutorial/
    • A basic Fortran 90 introduction: www.arc.unm.edu/EducationTraining/IntroToFortran90Programming.html
    • The SGI reference manual on Fortran 77
  • Some introductions to UNIX
    • BYU EE's tutorial: www.ee.byu.edu/support/computer_tutorial/
    • Matt Choptuik's introduction for a UBC computational physics class (also as postscript).
  • MPI
    • Some basic information with additional references and links.

• Computing resources

  • Beowulf/Linux clusters
    • NPACI's cluster page, Rocks
  • BYU's Origin2000
  • Parallel programming
    • Tutorial/introduction to parallel programming from the Maui High Peformance Computing Center
  • Boston University's repository of information about the Origin2000 with links to MPI and parallel computing.
  • Using the T90 at SDSC (San Diego Supercomputer Center).
  • Advanced Computing Center at UT Austin.

• My writeups and possible projects

  • Axisymmetric gravitational collapse of rotating scalar fields [pdf version].
  • Axisymmetric gravitational collapse of non-rotating charged scalar fields (gravitating electromagnetism and scalar fields) [pdf version].
  • Axisymmetric gravitational collapse of fluids.
  • Gravitational critical behavior in Einstein-Yang-Mills theories
  • [pdfversion].
  • Gravitational critical behavior in Einstein-Yang-Mills-Higgs theories (gravitating monopoles, dyons, etc)
  • Instability of black strings