Objective
Cosmology has entered a new era. After the surprising lessons learnt from recent observations and the ensuing revision of many traditional tenets, an entirely new set of questions has emerged in this field, and intensive theoretical searches are under way to find new physical mechanisms capable of answering them. Whilst intriguing ideas are continuously introduced, testing their consequences against the results of upcoming observative missions is a complex problem that requires accurate modelling of realistic scenarios, achievable only via numerical methods. The current modelling tools are, however, limited to simplified settings where the spacetime background is not evolved or heavy symmetry assumptions are made in order to reduce the dimensionality of the problem. In order to extend the domain of current codes, we intend to test cosmologically-relevant proposals using Cactus, a software framework for scientific codes inspired by software design concepts such as modularity, reusability and vast compatibilty across modern architectures. Cactus provides, among others, suites of tools for discretizing partial differential equations, handling parallel computations and concurrent I/O, and currently serves as a worldwide standard for three-dimensional, fully relativistic simulations of astrophysical-scale systems. In this proposal, we present an incremental plan for laying the foundations of a Cactus toolkit dedicated to cosmology; we will start out modelling the cosmic dynamics according to a selection of theories of gravity alternative to General Relativity.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2009-RG
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
MC-IRG - International Re-integration Grants (IRG)Coordinator
80539 Munchen
Germany