Overview of the ECHO code
The ECHO (Eulerian Conservative High Order) code is a computational tool for the numerical solution of the hyperbolic conservation laws of hydrodynamics and magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), both for classical and relativistic astrophysical plasmas. It is written in modern Fortran90, with MPI directives for parallel computing and runs on both CPU and GPU systems, with much higher performances in the latter case. ECHO allows for different physical modules, for a choice of various high-order finite-difference reconstruction routines and Riemann solvers, and it is designed to work in any coordinate system and spacetime metric.
The ECHO project started in the year 2000 with the first module for classical MHD, a few years later code was upgraded to treat special relativistic plasmas, in 2007 we presented the version for General Relativistic MHD, and the name ECHO was given to the code. In 2011 it has been combined to a solver for Einstein equations under the eXtended Conformally Flat Condition (X-ECHO, see also the related tool XNS for computing the structure of magnetized neutron stars), and a specialized version, named ECHO-QGP, was developed in 2013, in collaboration with the Relativistic and Nuclear Matter theory group in Florence, to investigate the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP) formed in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. In 2024 was ported to GPU platforms.
ECHO is not public, for any query about ECHO please contact: Luca Del Zanna