GiRaFFE: An Open-Source General Relativistic Force-Free Electrodynamics Code
Abstract
We present GiRaFFE, the first open-source general relativistic force-free electrodynamics (GRFFE) code for dynamical, numerical-relativity generated spacetimes. GiRaFFE adopts the strategy pioneered by McKinney and modified by Paschalidis and Shapiro to convert a GR magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) code into a GRFFE code. In short, GiRaFFE exists as a modification of IllinoisGRMHD, a user-friendly, open-source, dynamical-spacetime GRMHD code. Both GiRaFFE and IllinoisGRMHD leverage the Einstein Toolkit's highly-scalable infrastructure to make possible large-scale simulations of magnetized plasmas in strong, dynamical spacetimes on adaptive-mesh refinement (AMR) grids. We demonstrate that GiRaFFE passes a large suite of both flat and curved-spacetime code tests passed by a number of other state-of-the-art GRFFE codes, and is thus ready for production-scale simulations of GRFFE phenomena of key interest to relativistic astrophysics.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1704.00599,
title = {GiRaFFE: An Open-Source General Relativistic Force-Free Electrodynamics Code},
author = {Zachariah B. Etienne and Mew-Bing Wan and Maria C. Babiuc and Sean T. McWilliams and Ashok Choudhary},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1704.00599},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
23 pages, 4 figures. Consistent with published version