No Arabic abstract
Neutrino transport and neutrino-matter interactions are known to play an important role in the evolution of neutron star mergers, and of their post-merger remnants. Neutrinos cool remnants, drive post-merger winds, and deposit energy in the low-density polar regions where relativistic jets may eventually form. Neutrinos also modify the composition of the ejected material, impacting the outcome of nucleosynthesis in merger outflows and the properties of the optical/infrared transients that they power (kilonovae). So far, merger simulations have largely relied on approximate treatments of the neutrinos (leakage, moments) that simplify the equations of radiation transport in a way that makes simulations more affordable, but also introduces unquantifiable errors in the results. To improve on these methods, we recently published a first simulation of neutron star mergers using a low-cost Monte-Carlo algorithm for neutrino radiation transport. Our transport code limits costs in optically thick regions by placing a hard ceiling on the value of the absorption opacity of the fluid, yet all approximations made within the code are designed to vanish in the limit of infinite numerical resolution. We provide here an in-depth description of this algorithm, of its implementation in the SpEC merger code, and of the expected impact of our approximations in optically thick regions. We argue that the latter is a subdominant source of error at the accuracy reached by current simulations, and for the interactions currently included in our code. We also provide tests of the most important features of this code.
We present bhlight, a numerical scheme for solving the equations of general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamics (GRRMHD) using a direct Monte Carlo solution of the frequency-dependent radiative transport equation. bhlight is designed to evolve black hole accretion flows at intermediate accretion rate, in the regime between the classical radiatively efficient disk and the radiatively inefficient accretion flow (RIAF), in which global radiative effects play a sub-dominant but non-negligible role in disk dynamics. We describe the governing equations, numerical method, idiosyncrasies of our implementation, and a suite of test and convergence results. We also describe example applications to radiative Bondi accretion and to a slowly accreting Kerr black hole in axisymmetry.
Recent developments in compact object astrophysics, especially the discovery of merging neutron stars by LIGO, the imaging of the black hole in M87 by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) and high precision astrometry of the Galactic Center at close to the event horizon scale by the GRAVITY experiment motivate the development of numerical source models that solve the equations of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD). Here we compare GRMHD solutions for the evolution of a magnetized accretion flow where turbulence is promoted by the magnetorotational instability from a set of nine GRMHD codes: Athena++, BHAC, Cosmos++, ECHO, H-AMR, iharm3D, HARM-Noble, IllinoisGRMHD and KORAL. Agreement between the codes improves as resolution increases, as measured by a consistently applied, specially developed set of code performance metrics. We conclude that the community of GRMHD codes is mature, capable, and consistent on these test problems.
We model a compact black hole-accretion disk system in the collapsar scenario with full transport, frequency dependent, general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamics. We examine whether or not winds from a collapsar disk can undergo rapid neutron capture (r-process) nucleosynthesis and significantly contribute to solar r-process abundances. We find the inclusion of accurate transport has significant effects on outflows, raising the electron fraction above $Y_{rm e} sim 0.3$ and preventing third peak r-process material from being synthesized. We analyze the time-evolution of neutrino processes and electron fraction in the disk and present a simple one-dimensional model for the vertical structure that emerges. We compare our simulation to semi-analytic expectations and argue that accurate neutrino transport and realistic initial and boundary conditions are required to capture the dynamics and nucleosynthetic outcome of a collapsar.
We present the new code NADA-FLD to solve multi-dimensional neutrino-hydrodynamics in full general relativity (GR) in spherical polar coordinates. The energy-dependent neutrino transport assumes the flux-limited diffusion (FLD) approximation and evolves the neutrino energy densities measured in the frame comoving with the fluid. Operator splitting is used to avoid multi-dimensional coupling of grid cells in implicit integration steps involving matrix
When an accretion disk falls prey to the runaway instability, a large portion of its mass is devoured by the black hole within a few dynamical times. Despite decades of effort, it is still unclear under what conditions such an instability can occur. The technically most advanced relativistic simulations to date were unable to find a clear sign for the onset of the instability. In this work, we present three-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamics simulations of accretion disks around black holes in dynamical space-time. We focus on the configurations that are expected to be particularly prone to the development of this instability. We demonstrate, for the first time, that the fully self-consistent general relativistic evolution does indeed produce a runaway instability.