The Caltech Visitors Program on the Numerical Simulation of Gravitational Wave Sources will be analogous to programs at the ITP in Santa Barbara, but smaller (on average 4 visitors at a time), and longer (at least one full year, 2002-2003; and quite likely two or three full years, 2002-03, 2003-04, and 2004-05, depending on funding and on the program's effectiveness). This program is being developed by an international Scientific Organizing Committee consisting of leading young scholars in numerical relativity, numerical astrophysics, computational science, and mathematics. The visitors program will be organized around a series of primary research Focus Topics selected by the organizing committee. The focus topics that have been selected for the first year of the program are listed in the 2002-3 Program Schedule. The visitors program will be coordinated with related activities at the ITP, the Penn State Center for Gravitational Wave Physics, and the Minnesota Institute for Mathematics and its Applications (IMA).
The Caltech Visitors Program on the Numerical Simulation of Gravitational Wave Sources will be similar in structure to the programs at the ITP in Santa Barbara: organized around a series of research topics that will be the focus of the program for periods ranging from 2-6 months each. The program will typically consist of about four visitors at any given time, plus the members of the Caltech GW source simulations group. Caltech will fund about half the cost of this program and has asked NSF to fund the other half. The Caltech funds are firmly committed for the first year, independently of the fate of NSF funding, so the program will definitely go forward as planned, commencing June 1, 2002.
The Caltech and NSF funds will be used (among other things) to support travel expenses, living costs and, if funds are sufficient, sabbatical salary supplements for those participants who do not have other sources of such support.
The preliminary list of research focus topics has been selected by a Scientific Organizing Committee. This committee has been appointed (by Kip Thorne, who has ultimate responsibility for the program) from among the leading young scholars in numerical relativity, plus representative young astrophysicists, mathematians, and computational scientists with research interests that overlap the core focus of the program. This organizing committee now consists of Miguel Alcubierre (UNAM), Thomas Baumgarte (Bowdoin), Bernd Bruegmann (AEI), Manuela Campanelli (Brownsville), Gregory Cook (Wake Forest), Chris Fryer (LANL), Michael Holst (UCSD), Luis Lehner (UBC), Manish Parashar (Rutgers), Maximilian Ruffert (Edinburgh), Mark Scheel (Caltech) and Masaru Shibata (Tokyo). Lee Lindblom chairs the committee. This committee will determine the schedule of the visitors program (i.e. the ordering and duration of each of the focus topics), and will determine (following the procedures used at the ITP) which applicants will be invited to participate in the program for each focus topic (in consultation with Kip in those cases where salary support from Caltech funds is involved).
Dependent upon NSF funding, Caltech will also organize (under the direction of the Scientific Organizing Committee) a series of week long workshops (perhaps two per year) to be held in conjunction with the focus research topics. These workshops will allow a larger number (perhaps 15-20) of the leading researchers in the field to participate. These workshops and other activities of the Visitors Program will be coordinated with related programs at the ITP (Santa Barbara), the IMA (Minnesota), and the new Penn State Center for Gravitational Wave Astrophysics.
The Scientific Organizing Committee has selected a preliminary list of eight research focus topics (described in Focus Topics) around which the visitors program is organized. The ordering and duration of the focus topics in the program will be decided on a year by year basis and will be reviewed periodically to ensure that the most timely topics are considered first. The organizing committee will attempt to coordinate the scheduling of topics to facilitate and encourage interaction between participants in closely related focus areas.
For the first year, the organizing committee has selected the following three focus topics. 1) June 1, 2002 -- August 31, 2002: Quasi-adiabatic approximation techniques for evolving nearly circular compact binaries (binaries made of neutron stars and/or black holes). 2) September 1, 2002 -- December 31, 2002: Formulating the evolution equations of general relativity in a manner that can facilitate the construction of stable numerical evolution schemes for spacetimes containing compact objects (and in particular black holes). 3) January 1, 2003 -- April 30, 2003: Developing techniques for solving the initial value problem for astrophysically relevant initial data (including compact binaries). The intertwined nature of these focus topics and others described in Focus Topics dictates that the research will often reach out well beyond the chosen focus. The exact nature of the research, its approach to the focus topic, and its extensions beyond the focus topic will be determined by the program participants.