Published August 2019 | Version Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

The Event Horizon General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Code Comparison Project

Abstract

Recent developments in compact object astrophysics, especially the discovery of merging neutron stars by LIGO, the imaging of the black hole in M87 by the Event Horizon Telescope, and high- precision astrometry of the Galactic Center at close to the event horizon scale by the GRAVITY experiment motivate the development of numerical source models that solve the equations of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD). Here we compare GRMHD solutions for the evolution of a magnetized accretion flow where turbulence is promoted by the magnetorotational instability from a set of nine GRMHD codes: Athena++, BHAC, Cosmos++, ECHO, H-AMR, iharm3D, HARM-Noble, IllinoisGRMHD, and KORAL. Agreement among the codes improves as resolution increases, as measured by a consistently applied, specially developed set of code performance metrics. We conclude that the community of GRMHD codes is mature, capable, and consistent on these test problems.

Additional Information

© 2019 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2019 April 5; revised 2019 May 27; accepted 2019 May 28; published 2019 August 1. R.N. thanks the National Science Foundation (NSF; grants OISE-1743747, AST-1816420) and acknowledges computational support from the NSF via XSEDE resources (grant TG-AST080026N). L.D.Z. acknowledges support from the PRIN-MIUR project Multi-scale Simulations of High-Energy Astrophysical Plasmas (Prot. 2015L5EE2Y) and from the INFN—TEONGRAV initiative. C.J.W. made use of the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) Comet at the San Diego Supercomputer Center through allocation AST170012. The H-AMR high-resolution simulation was made possible by NSF PRAC award Nos. 1615281 and OAC-1811605 at the Blue Waters sustained-petascale computing project and supported in part under grant No. NSF PHY-1125915 (PI A. Tchekhovskoy). K.C. and S.M. are supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VICI grant (No. 639.043.513); M.L. is supported by the NWO Spinoza Prize (PI M.B.M. van der Klis). The HARM-Noble simulations were made possible by NSF PRAC award No. NSF OAC-1515969, OAC-1811228 at the Blue Waters sustained-petascale computing project, and supported in part under grant No. NSF PHY-1125915. The BHAC CKS-GRMHD simulations were performed on the Dutch National Supercomputing cluster Cartesius and are funded by the NWO computing grant 16431. S.C.N. was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the Goddard Space Flight Center administered by USRA through a contract with NASA. Y.M., H.O., O.P., and L.R. acknowledge support from the ERC synergy grant "BlackHoleCam: Imaging the Event Horizon of Black Holes" (grant No. 610058). M.B. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (grant No. 715368—MagBURST) and from the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing e.V. (www.Gauss-centre.eu) for funding this project by providing computing time on the GCS Supercomputer SuperMUC at Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (www.lrz.de). P.C.F. was supported by NSF grant AST-1616185 and used resources from the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by NSF grant No. ACI-1548562. Work by P.A. was performed in part under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. The authors of the present paper further thank the following organizations and programs: the Academy of Finland (projects 274477, 284495, 312496); the Advanced European Network of E-infrastructures for Astronomy with the SKA (AENEAS) project, supported by the European Commission Framework Programme Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation action under grant agreement 731016; the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung; the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, through a grant (60477) from the John Templeton Foundation; the China Scholarship Council; Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT, Chile, via PIA ACT172033, Fondecyt 1171506, BASAL AFB-170002, ALMA-conicyt 31140007); Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT, Mexico, projects 104497, 275201, 279006, 281692); the Delaney Family via the Delaney Family John A. Wheeler Chair at Perimeter Institute; Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (DGAPA-UNAM, project IN112417); the European Research Council Synergy Grant "BlackHoleCam: Imaging the Event Horizon of Black Holes" (grant 610058); the Generalitat Valenciana postdoctoral grant APOSTD/2018/177; the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (grants GBMF-3561, GBMF-5278); the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) sezione di Napoli, iniziative specifiche TEONGRAV; the International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Universities of Bonn and Cologne; the Jansky Fellowship program of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO); the Japanese Government (Monbukagakusho: MEXT) Scholarship; the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Research Fellowship (JP17J08829); the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS, grants QYZDJ-SSW-SLH057, QYZDJ-SSW-SYS008); the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellowship; the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG); the Max Planck Partner Group of the MPG and the CAS; the MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI (grants 18KK0090, JP18K13594, JP18K03656, JP18H03721, 18K03709, 18H01245, 25120007); the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Funds; the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of Taiwan (105-2112-M-001-025-MY3, 106-2112-M-001-011, 106-2119-M-001-027, 107-2119-M-001-017, 107-2119-M-001-020, and 107-2119-M-110-005); the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, Fermi Guest Investigator grant 80NSSC17K0649); the National Institute of Natural Sciences (NINS) of Japan; the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant 2016YFA0400704, 2016YFA0400702); the National Science Foundation (NSF, grants AST-0096454, AST-0352953, AST-0521233, AST-0705062, AST-0905844, AST-0922984, AST-1126433, AST-1140030, DGE-1144085, AST-1207704, AST-1207730, AST-1207752, MRI-1228509, OPP-1248097, AST-1310896, AST-1312651, AST-1337663, AST-1440254, AST-1555365, AST-1715061, AST-1615796, AST-1716327, OISE-1743747, AST-1816420); the Natural Science Foundation of China (grants 11573051, 11633006, 11650110427, 10625314, 11721303, 11725312); the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC, including a Discovery Grant and the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarships Doctoral Program); the National Youth Thousand Talents Program of China; the National Research Foundation of Korea (the Global PhD Fellowship Grant: grants NRF-2015H1A2A1033752, 2015-R1D1A1A01056807, the Korea Research Fellowship Program: NRF-2015H1D3A1066561); the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) VICI award (grant 639.043.513) and Spinoza Prize SPI 78-409; the New Scientific Frontiers with Precision Radio Interferometry Fellowship awarded by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), which is a facility of the National Research Foundation (NRF), an agency of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) of South Africa; the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) national infrastructure, for the provisioning of its facilities/observational support (OSO receives funding through the Swedish Research Council under grant 2017-00648); the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (research at Perimeter Institute is supported by the Government of Canada through the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, and by the Province of Ontario through the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science); the Russian Science Foundation (grant 17-12-01029); the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (grants AYA2015-63939-C2-1-P, AYA2016-80889-P); the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the "Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa" award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709); the Toray Science Foundation; the US Department of Energy (USDOE) through the Los Alamos National Laboratory (operated by Triad National Security, LLC, for the National Nuclear Security Administration of the USDOE (Contract 89233218CNA000001)); the Italian Ministero dell'Istruzione Università e Ricerca through the grant Progetti Premiali 2012-iALMA (CUP C52I13000140001); the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 730562 RadioNet; ALMA North America Development Fund; the Academia Sinica; and Chandra TM6-17006X. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), supported by NSF grant ACI-1548562, and CyVerse, supported by NSF grants DBI-0735191, DBI-1265383, and DBI-1743442. XSEDE Stampede2 resource at TACC was allocated through TG-AST170024 and TG-AST080026N. XSEDE JetStream resource at PTI and TACC was allocated through AST170028. The simulations were performed in part on the SuperMUC cluster at the LRZ in Garching, on the LOEWE cluster in CSC in Frankfurt, and on the HazelHen cluster at the HLRS in Stuttgart. This research was enabled in part by support provided by Compute Ontario (http://computeontario.ca), Calcul Quebec (http://www.calculquebec.ca), and Compute Canada (http://www.computecanada.ca). Software: Athena++ (White et al. 2016); BHAC (Porth et al. 2017); Cosmos++, (Anninos et al. 2005; Fragile et al. 2012, 2014); ECHO (Del Zanna et al. 2007); H-AMR (Liska et al. 2018a; Chatterjee et al. 2019); HARM-Noble (Gammie et al. 2003; Noble et al. 2006, 2009); iharm3D (Gammie et al. 2003; Noble et al. 2006, 2009); IllinoisGRMHD (Etienne et al. 2015); KORAL, (Sa̧dowski et al. 2013, 2014).

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97607
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CaltechAUTHORS:20190801-140253346

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NSF
OISE-1743747
NSF
AST-1816420
NSF
TG-AST080026N
Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Universita e della Ricerca (MIUR)
2015L5EE2Y
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
NSF
OAC-1615281
NSF
OAC-1811605
NSF
PHY-1125915
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
639.043.513
NSF
OAC-1515969
NSF
OAC-1811228
NSF
PHY-1125915
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
16431
NASA Postdoctoral Program
European Research Council (ERC)
610058
European Research Council (ERC)
715368
Gauss Centre for Supercomputing e.V.
NSF
AST-1616185
NSF
ACI-1548562
Department of Energy (DOE)
DE-AC52-07NA27344
Academy of Finland
274477
Academy of Finland
284495
Academy of Finland
312496
European Research Council (ERC)
731016
Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung
Harvard University
John Templeton Foundation
60477
China Scholarship Council
Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT)
PIA ACT172033
Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT)
1171506
BASAL-CATA
AFB-170002
Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT)
31140007
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
104497
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
275201
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
279006
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT)
281692
Delaney Family
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
Dirección General de Asuntos del Personal Académico-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (DGAPA-UNAM)
IN112417
European Research Council (ERC)
610058
Generalitat Valenciana
APOSTD/2018/177
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
GBMF-3561
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
GBMF-5278
International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Astronomy and Astrophysics
University of Bonn
University of Cologne
Jansky Fellowship
National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)
Japanese Monbukagakusho
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP17J08829
Chinese Academy of Sciences
QYZDJ-SSW-SLH057
Chinese Academy of Sciences
QYZDJ-SSW-SYS008
Leverhulme Trust
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
18KK0090
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP18K13594
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP18K03656
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
JP18H03721
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
18K03709
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
18H01245
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
25120007
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
105-2112-M-001-025-MY3
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
106-2112-M-001-011
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
106-2119-M-001-027
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
107-2119-M-001-017
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
107-2119-M-001-020
Ministry of Science and Technology (Taipei)
107-2119-M-110-005
NASA
80NSSC17K0649
National Institute of Natural Sciences (NINS)
National Key Research and Development Program of China
2016YFA0400704
National Key Research and Development Program of China
2016YFA0400702
NSF
AST-0096454
NSF
AST-0352953
NSF
AST-0521233
NSF
AST-0705062
NSF
AST-0905844
NSF
AST-0922984
NSF
AST-1126433
NSF
AST-1140030
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
DGE-1144085
NSF
AST-1207704
NSF
AST-1207730
NSF
AST-1207752
NSF
MRI-1228509
NSF
OPP-1248097
NSF
AST-1310896
NSF
AST-1312651
NSF
AST-1337663
NSF
AST-1440254
NSF
AST-1555365
NSF
AST-1715061
NSF
AST-1615796
NSF
AST-1716327
NSF
OISE-1743747
NSF
AST-1816420
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11573051
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11633006
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11650110427
National Natural Science Foundation of China
10625314
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11721303
National Natural Science Foundation of China
11725312
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
National Youth Thousand Talents Program of China
National Research Foundation of Korea
NRF-2015H1A2A1033752
National Research Foundation of Korea
2015-R1D1A1A01056807
National Research Foundation of Korea
NRF-2015H1D3A1066561
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO)
639.043.513
Spinoza Prize
SPI 78-409
South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO)
National Research Foundation (South Africa)
Department of Science and Technology (South Africa)
Onsala Space Observatory (OSO)
Swedish Research Council
2017-00648
Government of Canada
Province of Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science
Russian Science Foundation
17-12-01029
Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)
AYA2015-63939-C2-1-P
Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO)
AYA2016-80889-P
Severo Ochoa
SEV-2017-0709
Toray Science Foundation
Department of Energy (DOE)
89233218CNA000001
Ministero dell'Istruzione, Università e Ricerca (MIUR)
Progetti Premiali 2012-iALMA
Ministero dell'Istruzione, Università e Ricerca (MIUR)
CUP C52I13000140001
European Research Council (ERC)
730562
ALMA North America Development Fund
Academia Sinica
NASA Chandra
TM6-17006X
NSF
ACI-1548562
NSF
DBI-0735191
NSF
DBI-1265383
NSF
DBI-1743442
NSF
TG-AST170024
NSF
TG-AST080026N
NSF
AST-170028
Compute Ontario
Calcul Quebec
Compute Canada

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2019-08-01
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