Erik Schnetter

Research Interests

My scientific interests lie at the cross-over of relativistic astrophysics and computational physics. In astrophysics, I study compact objects as sources of gravitational radiation, including novel numerical approximations to allow for increase accuracy. In computational physics, I research efficient software infrastructure for high performance computing, including tools for large-scale collaborations.

As Research Technologies Group Lead at the Perimeter Institute, I collaborate with researchers in various areas of theoretical physics providing expertise on computational methods. These collaborations touch most of Perimeter's key research areas.

I research and develop computational infrastructure for a range of inter-disciplinary projects as software architect of the Einstein Toolkit , a community-driven, freely accessible, extensible computational infrastructure for relativistic astrophysics and related fields. Most of the Einstein Toolkit is based on the Cactus Framework for high-performance computing and the Carpet adaptive mesh refinement driver.

Positions Held

• 2008 - 2011 Department of Physics & Astronomy, Louisiana State University, Assistant Research Professor
• 2008 - 2012 Center for Computation & Technology, Louisiana State University, Assistant Research Professor
• 2005 - 2008 Center for Computation & Technology, Louisiana State University, Research Staff
• 2003 - 2005 Albert-Einstein-Institute, Potstam, Postdoctoral Scholar

Awards

• First place, Second IEEE International Scalable Computing Challenge (SCALE 2009), Shanghai, May 2009, for "Large Scale Problem Solving Using Automatic Code Generation and Distributed Visualization"

Recent Publications

• Christian Reisswig, Roland Haas, Christian D. Ott, Ernazar Abdikamalov, Philipp Mösta, Denis Pollney, Erik. Schnetter, Three-dimensional general-relativistic hydrodynamic simulations of binary neutron star coalescence and stellar collapse with multipatch grids, Phys. Rev. D 87, 064023 (2013) (doi: 10.1103/PhysRevD.87.064023)
• Christian D. Ott, Ernazar Abdikamalov, Philipp Mösta, Roland Haas, Steve Drasco, Evan P. O'Connor, Christian Reisswig, Casey A. Meakin, Erik Schnetter, General-Relativistic Simulations of Three-Dimensional Core-Collapse Supernovae, Astrophys. J. 768, 115 (2013) (doi:10.1088/0004-637X/768/2/115)
• Frank Löffler, Joshua Faber, Eloisa Bentivegna, Tanja Bode, Peter Diener, Roland Haas, Ian Hinder, Bruno C. Mundim, Christian D. Ott, Erik Schnetter, Gabrielle Allen, Manuela Campanelli, Pablo Laguna. The Einstein Toolkit: A Community Computational Infrastructure for Relativistic Astrophysics. Class. Quantum Grav. 29, 115001, 2012. (doi:10.1088/0264-9381/29/11/115001)
• Christian D. Ott, Ernazar. Abdikamalov, Evan O"Connor, Christian Reisswig, Roland Haas, Peter Kalmus, Steve Drasco, Adam Burrows, Erik Schnetter, Correlated gravitational wave and neutrino signals from general-relativistic rapidly rotating iron core collapse, Phys. Rev. D 86, 024026 (2012) (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.86.024026)
• C. D. Ott, E. Abdikamalov, E. O'Connor, C. Reisswig, R. Haas, P. Kalmus, S. Drasco A. Burrows, E. Schnetter. Correlated gravitational wave and neutrino signals from general-relativistic rapidly rotating iron core collapse. Phys. Rev. D 86, 024026, 2012. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.86.024026)
• Ernazar Abdikamalov, Adam Burrows, Christian D. Ott, Frank Löffler, Evan O'Connor, Joshua C. Dolence, and Erik Schnetter, A New Monte Carlo Method for Time-Dependent Neutrino Radiation Transport, Astrophys. J. 755 (2012) 111 (soi:10.1088/0004-637X/755/2/111)
• Ernazar Abdikamalov, Adam Burrows, Christian D. Ott, Frank Löffler, Evan O'Connor, Joshua C. Dolence, Erik Schnetter. A New Monte Carlo Method for Time-Dependent Neutrino Radiation Transport. ApJ (accepted), 2012.
• J. David Brown, Peter Diener, Scott E. Field, Jan S. Hesthaven, Frank Herrmann, Abdul H. Mroué, Olivier Sarbach, Erik Schnetter, Manuel Tiglio, Michael Wagman. Numerical simulations with a first order BSSN formulation of Einstein's field equations. Phys. Rev. D 85, 084004, 2012. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.85.084004)
• Ulrich Sperhake, Vitor Cardoso, Christian D. Ott, Erik Schnetter, Helvi Witek. Extreme black hole simulations: collisions of unequal mass black holes and the point particle limit. Phys. Rev. D 84 084038, 2011. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.84.084038)
• Marek Blazewicz, Steven R. Brandt, Peter Diener, David M. Koppelman, Krzysztof Kurowski, Frank Löffler, Erik Schnetter, Jian Tao. A Massive Data Parallel Computational Framework for Petascale/Exascale Hybrid Computer Systems. Parallel Computing 2011 (ParCo2011), 30 August -- 2 September 2011, Ghent, Belgium. http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2118
• Zebrowski, Ashley Nicole; Loffler, Frank; Schnetter, Erik; The BL-Octree: An Efficient Data Structure for Discretized Block-Based Adaptive Mesh Refinement, ParCo 2011, Ghent, Belgium
• Blazewicz, Marek; Brandt, Steven R.; Diener, Peter; Koppelman, David M.; Kurowski, Krzysztof; Loffler, Frank; Schnetter, Erik; Tao, Jian; A Massive Data Parallel Computational Framework on Petascale/Exascale Hybrid Computer Systems, ParCo 2011, Ghent, Belgium
• Frank Loffler, Gabrielle Allen, Werner Benger, Andrei Hutanu, Shantenu Jha, and Erik Schnetter. Using the TeraGrid to teach Scientific Computing. In TG 2011: Proceedings of the 2011 TeraGrid Conference, New York, NY, USA, 2011. ACM
• Oleg Korobkin, Gabrielle Allen, Steven R. Brandt, Eloisa Bentivegna, Peter Diener, Jinghua Ge, Frank Loffler, Erik Schnetter, Jian Tao, Runtime analysis tools for parallel scientific applications, TG '11: Proceedings of the 2011 TeraGrid Conference: Extreme Digital Discovery
• Steven R. Brandt, Oleg Korobkin, Frank Loffler, Jian Tao, Erik Schnetter Ian Hinder, Dennis Castleberry, Michael Thomas, The Prickly Pear Archive, Procedia Computer Science, Volume 4, 2011, Pages 750-758, doi:10.1016/j.procs.2011.04.079
• Gabrielle Allena, Werner Benger, Andrei Hutanu, Shantenu Jha, Frank Loffler, Erik Schnetter, A practical and comprehensive graduate course preparing students for research involving scientific computing, Procedia Computer Science, Volume 4, 2011, Pages 1927-1936, doi:10.1016/j.procs.2011.04.210
• C. D. Ott, C. Reisswig, E. Schnetter, E. O'Connor, U. Sperhake, F. Loeffler, P. Diener, E. Abdikamalov, I. Hawke, A. Burrows, Dynamics and Gravitational Wave Signature of Collapsar Formation, Phys.Rev.Lett.106:161103,2011, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.161103
• Christian Reisswig, Christian D. Ott, Ulrich Sperhake, and Erik Schnetter. Gravitational wave extraction in simulations of rotating stellar core collapse. Phys. Rev. D, 83:064008, 2011. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.83.064008)
• Oleg Korobkin, Ernazar B. Abdikamalov, Erik Schnetter, Nikolaos Stergioulas, and Burkhard Zink. Stability of general-relativistic accretion disks. Phys. Rev. D, 83:043007, 2011. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.83.043007)
• Eric L. Seidel, Gabrielle Allen, Steven Brandt, Frank Loffler, and Erik Schnetter. Simplifying complex software assembly: The component retrieval language and implementation. In Proceedings of the 2010 TeraGrid Conference. ACM New York, NY, USA, 2010. (doi:10.1145/1838574.1838592)
• Erik Schnetter. Time step size limitation introduced by the BSSN Gamma driver. Class. Quantum Grav., 27:167001, 2010. (doi:10.1088/0264-9381/27/16/167001)
• Soon-Heum Ko, Prasad Khalghatgi, Erik Schnetter, Sumanta Acharya, Gabrielle Allen, Shantenu Jha, Mayank Tyagi, Development of a Cactus CFD toolkit and its utilisation on large-scale multi-block simulation, ECCOMAS 2010, V European Conference on Computational Fluid Dynamics, Lisbon, Portugal
• Andrei Hutanu, Erik Schnetter, Werner Benger, Eloisa Bentivegna, Alex Clary, Peter Diener, Jinghua Ge, Robert Kooima, Oleg Korobkin, Kexi Liu, Frank Loffler, Ravi Paruchuri, Jian Tao, Cornelius Toole, Adam Yates, and Gabrielle Allen. Large scale problem solving using automatic code generation and distributed visualization. In Ewa Deelman, Norbert Meyer, Dana Petcu, and Marcin Paprzycki, editors, Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience; Scientific International Journal for Parallel and Distributed Computing; Special Issue: Grid and Cloud Computing and their Application, volume 11, page 205-220, 2010
• Burkhard Zink, Oleg Korobkin, Erik Schnetter, and Nikolaos Stergioulas. On the frequency band of the f-mode CFS instability. Phys. Rev. D, 81:084055, 2010. (doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.81.084055)
• Werner Benger, Andrew Hamilton, Mike Folk, Quincey Koziol, Simon Su, Erik Schnetter, Marcel Ritter, and Georg Ritter. Using geometric algebra for navigation in Riemannian and hard disc space. In Vaclav Skala and Dietmar Hildebrand, editors, GraVisMa 2009 - Computer Graphics, Vision and Mathematics for Scientific Computing. UNION Agency, Na Mazinach 9, CZ 322 00 Plzen, Czech Republic, 2010
• Coarse graining of spin net models: dynamics of intertwiners, Bianca Dittrich, Mercedes Martín-Benito, Erik Schnetter, arXiv: 1306.2987
• The Transient Gravitational-Wave Sky, Nils Andersson, John Baker, Kris Belczynski, Sebastiano Bernuzzi, Emanuele Berti, Laura Cadonati, Pablo Cerda-Duran, James Clark, Marc Favata, Lee Samuel Finn, Chris Fryer, Bruno Giacomazzo, Jose Antonio Gonzalez, Martin Hendry, Ik Siong Heng, Stefan Hild, Nathan Johnson-McDaniel, Peter Kalmus, Sergei Klimenko, Shiho Kobayashi, Kostas Kokkotas, Pablo Laguna, Luis Lehner, Janna Levin, Steve Liebling, Andrew MacFadyen, Ilya Mandel, Szabolcs Marka, Zsuzsa Marka, David Neilsen, Paul O'Brien, Rosalba Perna, Harald Pfeiffer, Jocelyn Read, Christian Reisswig, Carl Rodriguez, Max Ruffert, Erik Schnetter, Antony Searle, Peter Shawhan, Deirdre Shoemaker, Alicia Soderberg, Ulrich Sperhake, Patrick Sutton, Nial Tanvir, Michal Was, Stan Whitcomb, arXiv: 1305.0816
• Christian Reisswig and Christian D. Ott and Ernazar Abdikamalov and Roland Haas and Philipp Moesta and Erik Schnetter, Formation and Coalescence of Cosmological Supermassive Black Hole Binaries in Supermassive Star Collapse, arXiv: 1304.7787 [astro-ph.CO]
• Philipp Moesta, Bruno C. Mundim, Joshua A. Faber, Roland Haas, Scott C. Noble, Tanja Bode, Frank Loeffler, Christian D. Ott, Christian Reisswig, Erik Schnetter, GRHydro: A new open source general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics code for the Einstein Toolkit, arXiv: 1304.5544 [gr-qc]
• Eloisa Bentivegna, Gabrielle Allen, Oleg Korobkin, Erik Schnetter, Ensuring Correctness at the Application Level: a Software Framework Approach, arXiv: 1101.3161 [cs.SE]
• Component Specification in the Cactus Framework: The Cactus Configuration Language, Gabrielle Allen, Tom Goodale, Frank Löffler, David Rideout, Erik Schnetter, Eric L. Seidel, arXiv: 1009.1341
• Gabrielle Allen, Tom Goodale, Frank Loffler, David Rideout, Erik Schnetter, and Eric L. Seidel. Component specification in the arXiv: 1009.1341v1 [cs.DC]
• Michael W. Thomas and Erik Schnetter. Simulation factory: Taming application configuration and workflow on high-end resources, 2010, arXiv: 1008.4571 [cs.DC]
• Herbert J. Bernstein, Michael J. Folk, Werner Bengerc, Matthew T. Dougherty, Kevin W. Eliceiri, and Erik Schnetter. Communicating Scientific Data from the Present to the Future. Position paper, NSF Funded Workshop "Research Data Lifecycle Management". July 18 - July 20, 2011 Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
• Leonid Oliker, Jonathan Carter, Vincent Beckner, John Bell, Harvey Wasserman, Mark Adams, Stéphane Ethier, and Erik Schnetter. Large-scale numerical simulations on high-end computational platforms. In David H. Bailey, Robert F. Lucas, and Samuel W. Williams, editors, Performance Tuning of Scientific Applications, chapter 6. Chapman & Hall/CRC Computational Science Series, 2011

Seminars

• Performance and Optimization Abstractionsfor Large Scale Heterogeneous Systemsin the Cactus/Chemora Framework, XSCALE 2013, Boulder, CO, USA
• High Performance Computingin Relativistic Astrophysics, Department of Physics & Astronomy, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, CA
• High Performance Computational Relativistic Astrophysics, Department of Physics, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON, CA
• Modern Methods in Numerical Relativity, AMS Fall Eastern Sectional Meeting, Rochester, NY, USA
• A Computational Framework for Sustainable Development of Large Scale Scientific Application on Heterogeneous Systems. XSCALE 2012 workshop, Chicago, IL, USA
• The Einstein Toolkit and Its Community. Numerical Cosmology 2012, Cambridge, UK
• From Physics Model to Results: An Optimizing Framework for Cross-Architecture Code Generation, Sharcnet Research Day 2012, Guelph, ON, Canada
• The Einstein Toolkit: From Black Holes to Gamma-Ray Bursts. University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Oshawa, ON, Canada
• The Prickly Pear Archive, ICCS 2011, Singapore, Singapore
• The Einstein Toolkit, Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USA
• PIRSA:13090055, 13/14 PSI - Computational Methods in Physics - Lecture 4, 2013-09-06, 13/14 PSI - Front End
• PIRSA:13090054, 13/14 PSI - Computational Methods in Physics - Lecture 3, 2013-09-05, 13/14 PSI - Front End
• PIRSA:13090053, 13/14 PSI - Computational Methods in Physics - Lecture 2, 2013-09-04, 13/14 PSI - Front End
• PIRSA:13090052, 13/14 PSI - Computational Methods in Physics - Lecture 1, 2013-09-03, 13/14 PSI - Front End
• PIRSA:12020140, Introduction; Computing environment at Perimeter, 2012-02-09, Workshop: Computational Methods at Perimeter - 2012
• PIRSA:12020148, Computational Relativistic Astrophysics, 2012-02-09, Workshop: Computational Methods at Perimeter - 2012
• PIRSA:11060085, The Einstein Toolkit, 2011-06-22, Microphysics in computational relativistic astrophysics - 2011