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We describe the structure and implementation of a moving-mesh hydrodynamics solver in the large-scale parallel code, Charm N-body GrAvity solver (ChaNGa). While largely based on the algorithm described by Springel (2010) that is implemented in AREPO, our algorithm differs a few aspects. We describe our use of the Voronoi tessellation library, VORO++, to compute the Voronoi tessellation directly. We also incorporate some recent advances in gradient estimation and reconstruction that gives better accuracy in hydrodynamic solutions at minimal computational cost. We validate this module with a small battery of test problems against the smooth particle hydrodynamics solver included in ChaNGa. Finally, we study one example of a scientific problem involving the mergers of two main sequence stars and highlight the small quantitative differences between smooth particle and moving-mesh hydrodynamics. We close with a discussion of anticipated future improvements and advancements.
In certain astrophysical systems the commonly employed ideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) approximation breaks down. Here, we introduce novel explicit and implicit numerical schemes of ohmic resistivity terms in the moving-mesh code AREPO. We include these non-ideal terms for two MHD techniques: the Powell 8-wave formalism and a constrained transport scheme, which evolves the cell-centred magnetic vector potential. We test our implementation against problems of increasing complexity, such as one- and two-dimensional diffusion problems, and the evolution of progressive and stationary Alfven waves. On these test problems, our implementation recovers the analytic solutions to second-order accuracy. As first applications, we investigate the tearing instability in magnetized plasmas and the gravitational collapse of a rotating magnetized gas cloud. In both systems, resistivity plays a key role. In the former case, it allows for the development of the tearing instability through reconnection of the magnetic field lines. In the latter, the adopted (constant) value of ohmic resistivity has an impact on both the gas distribution around the emerging protostar and the mass loading of magnetically driven outflows. Our new non-ideal MHD implementation opens up the possibility to study magneto-hydrodynamical systems on a moving mesh beyond the ideal MHD approximation.
We introduce the moving mesh code Shadowfax, which can be used to evolve a mixture of gas, subject to the laws of hydrodynamics and gravity, and any collisionless fluid only subject to gravity, such as cold dark matter or stars. The code is written in C++ and its source code is made available to the scientific community under the GNU Affero General Public License. We outline the algorithm and the design of our implementation, and demonstrate its validity through the results of a set of basic test problems, which are also part of the public version. We also compare Shadowfax with a number of other publicly available codes using different hydrodynamical integration schemes, illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of the moving mesh technique.
Many problems in stellar astrophysics feature flows at low Mach numbers. Conventional compressible hydrodynamics schemes frequently used in the field have been developed for the transonic regime and exhibit excessive numerical dissipation for these flows. While schemes were proposed that solve hydrodynamics strictly in the low Mach regime and thus restrict their applicability, we aim at developing a scheme that correctly operates in a wide range of Mach numbers. Based on an analysis of the asymptotic behavior of the Euler equations in the low Mach limit we propose a novel scheme that is able to maintain a low Mach number flow setup while retaining all effects of compressibility. This is achieved by a suitable modification of the well-known Roe solver. Numerical tests demonstrate the capability of this new scheme to reproduce slow flow structures even in moderate numerical resolution. Our scheme provides a promising approach to a consistent multidimensional hydrodynamical treatment of astrophysical low Mach number problems such as convection, instabilities, and mixing in stellar evolution.
An implicit method for the ohmic dissipation is proposed. The proposed method is based on the Crank-Nicolson method and exhibits second-order accuracy in time and space. The proposed method has been implemented in the SFUMATO adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code. The multigrid method on the grids of the AMR hierarchy converges the solution. The convergence is fast but depends on the time step, resolution, and resistivity. Test problems demonstrated that decent solutions are obtained even at the interface between fine and coarse grids. Moreover, the solution obtained by the proposed method shows good agreement with that obtained by the explicit method, which required many time steps. The present method reduces the number of time steps, and hence the computational costs, as compared with the explicit method.
We present the public Monte Carlo photoionization and moving-mesh radiation hydrodynamics code CMacIonize, which can be used to simulate the self-consistent evolution of HII regions surrounding young O and B stars, or other sources of ionizing radiation. The code combines a Monte Carlo photoionization algorithm that uses a complex mix of hydrogen, helium and several coolants in order to self-consistently solve for the ionization and temperature balance at any given type, with a standard first order hydrodynamics scheme. The code can be run as a post-processing tool to get the line emission from an existing simulation snapshot, but can also be used to run full radiation hydrodynamical simulations. Both the radiation transfer and the hydrodynamics are implemented in a general way that is independent of the grid structure that is used to discretize the system, allowing it to be run both as a standard fixed grid code, but also as a moving-mesh code.