Eccentricity Measurement and Reduction for the Einstein Toolkit

The Einstein Toolkit is an open source software package meant for scientific computing in relativistic astro-physics. In this project, a gauge-invariant numerical algorithm was developed to characterize the time-dependent orbital parameters of binary black hole merger simulations, i.e., the orbital eccentricity and mean anomaly. Furthermore, an open source algorithm was designed to produce high-quality initial data to numerically simulate binary black hole mergers on nearly quasi-circular orbits. These two numerical methods will become an integral part of the Einstein Toolkit to streamline the production and characterization of numerical relativity waveforms for the gravitational wave astrophysics community.