Prof. Dr. Luciano Rezzolla, the Chair of Theoretical Astrophysics at Goethe University and Senior Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, has been named winner of the PRACE 2024 HPC Excellence Award. The award recognizes his use of high-performance computing (HPC) to simulate astrophysical compact objects such as neutron stars and black holes and the dynamics of matter and light as it accretes onto black holes. As a member of the international Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, his team’s work contributed to the generation of the world’s first image of a black hole in 2019 (the M87 galaxy), the first image of the black hole at the center of our galaxy (Sgr A) in 2022, as well as ongoing work focused on gaining a better understanding of black hole physics.
Feb 07, 2025
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Rezzolla and his team have been longtime users of high-performance computing resources at the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS). His current project at HLRS is focused on investigating microphysical aspects of binary neutron star mergers.
The PRACE HPC Excellence Award recognizes Rezzolla’s work as a participant in the EHT consortium in developing a novel approach for determining the shape of a black hole. Using HLRS’s Hazel Hen and Hawk supercomputers, as well as computing resources at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, he conducted numerous general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics simulations (GRMHD) to provide realistic descriptions of how plasma and light bend due to the extreme gravitational fields surrounding black holes. In addition, his team developed an approach for generating synthetic images of black holes based on the results of the GRMHD simulations. These synthetic images were ultimately compared with observational data from radio telescopes to ensure that the EHT’s black hole images were physically and mathematically accurate.
The supermassive black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy is surrounded by a ring of photons being bent by gravity. Image: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
Because black holes are impossible to see with the eye, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration’s image of M87 was widely acknowledged as a major accomplishment, and was named by Science magazine as its 2019 Breakthrough of the Year.
“Generating these simulations of black hole plasma physics is impossible without high-performance computing,” Rezzolla said. “I am proud to have received the PRACE HPC Excellence Award and am grateful for having had the opportunity to use the machines at HLRS to achieve this result.“
The PRACE HPC Excellence Award is organized by the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, a membership organization that supports the European high-performance computing community. Given once each year since 2022, the award recognizes outstanding research using HPC.
HLRS congratulates Prof. Rezzolla on this achievement.
— Christopher Williams
PRACE 2024 HPC Excellence Award Goes to Professor Luciano Rezzolla (PRACE)
Preis für Hochleistungsrechnen geht an Luciano Rezzolla (Goethe Universität Frankfurt)
GCS Supercomputing Resources Support Generation of First Images of a Black Hole (Gauss Centre for Supercomputing)
GCS Supercomputers Help Create First Image of Black Hole at the Center of Milky Way (Gauss Centre for Supercomputing)
Funding for Hazel Hen and Hawk was provided by Baden-Württemberg Ministry for Science, Research, and the Arts and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research through the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS).
