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Dietrich uses high-performance computing (HPC) systems at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) and the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS)—two of the three GCS centres—to do numerical-relativistic simulations as well as numerical analyses of data from gravitational wave detectors.

GCS resources have played a major role in enabling Dietrich’s research, providing him and his collaborators with hundreds of millions of core-hours for calculations that could only be done on world-class HPC resources. “Gravitational wave astronomy is a new and extremely exciting research topic. Without the support of the GCS centers and with the necessary HPC resources, we would not be able to perform the studies that we did over the last years", Dietrich said. “Indeed, numerical-relativistic simulations have been essential to understand the dynamics of merging neutron stars and to learn more about the Universe.”

Dietrich and his team won the award for its work modelling neutron star mergers, but also put together a database of gravitational wave signals from two merging neutron stars. Dietrich is a member of the LIGO scientific collaboration, a multi-institution, international collaboration of researchers who were the first to confirm the existence of gravitational waves.

More information on Dietrich and his work is available here. For more information about the award, please visit the DFG Website.

March 15, 2021