No Arabic abstract
Our contribution concerns with the numerical solution of the 3D general relativistic hydrodynamical system of equations within the framework of the 3+1 formalism. We summarize the theoretical ingredients which are necessary in order to build up a numerical scheme based on the solution of local Riemann problems. Hence, the full spectral decomposition of the Jacobian matrices of the system, i.e., the eigenvalues and the right and left eigenvectors, is explicitly shown. An alternative approach consists in using any of the special relativistic Riemann solvers recently developed for describing the evolution of special relativistic flows. Our proposal relies on a local change of coordinates in terms of which the spacetime metric is locally Minkowskian and permits an accurate description of numerical general relativistic hydrodynamics.
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
A Riemann problem with prescribed initial conditions will produce one of three possible wave patterns corresponding to the propagation of the different discontinuities that will be produced once the system is allowed to relax. In general, when solving the Riemann problem numerically, the determination of the specific wave pattern produced is obtained through some initial guess which can be successively discarded or improved. We here discuss a new procedure, suitable for implementation in an exact Riemann solver in one dimension, which removes the initial ambiguity in the wave pattern. In particular we focus our attention on the relativistic velocity jump between the two initial states and use this to determine, through some analytic conditions, the wave pattern produced by the decay of the initial discontinuity. The exact Riemann problem is then solved by means of calculating the root of a nonlinear equation. Interestingly, in the case of two rarefaction waves, this root can even be found analytically. Our procedure is straightforward to implement numerically and improves the efficiency of numerical codes based on exact Riemann solvers.
We present the implementation of an implicit-explicit (IMEX) Runge-Kutta numerical scheme for general relativistic hydrodynamics coupled to an optically thick radiation field in two existing GR-hydrodynamics codes. We argue that the necessity of such an improvement arises naturally in astrophysically relevant regimes where the optical thickness is high as the equations become stiff. By performing several 1D tests we verify the codes new ability to deal with this stiffness and show consistency. Then, still in 1D, we compute a luminosity versus accretion rate diagram for the setup of spherical accretion onto a Schwarzschild black hole and find good agreement with previous work. Lastly, we revisit the supersonic Bondi Hoyle Lyttleton (BHL) accretion in 2D where we can now present simulations of realistic temperatures, down to T~10^6 K. Here we find that radiation pressure plays an important role, but also that these highly dynamical set-ups push our approximate treatment towards the limit of physical applicability. The main features of radiation hydrodynamics BHL flows manifest as (i) an effective adiabatic index approaching gamma_effective ~ 4/3; (ii) accretion rates two orders of magnitude lower than without radiation pressure; (iii) luminosity estimates around the Eddington limit, hence with an overall radiative efficiency as small as eta ~ 10^{-2}; (iv) strong departures from thermal equilibrium in shocked regions; (v) no appearance of the flip-flop instability. We conclude that the current optically thick approximation to the radiation transfer does give physically substantial improvements over the pure hydro also in set-ups departing from equilibrium, and, once accompanied by an optically thin treatment, is likely to provide a fundamental tool for investigating accretion flows in a large variety of astrophysical systems.
We present a new general relativistic (GR) code for hydrodynamic supernova simulations with neutrino transport in spherical and azimuthal symmetry (1D/2D). The code is a combination of the CoCoNuT hydro module, which is a Riemann-solver based, high-resolution shock-capturing method, and the three-flavor, energy-dependent neutrino transport scheme VERTEX. VERTEX integrates the neutrino moment equations with a variable Eddington factor closure computed from a model Boltzmann equation and uses the ray-by-ray plus approximation in 2D, assuming the neutrino distribution to be axially symmetric around the radial direction, and thus the neutrino flux to be radial. Our spacetime treatment employs the ADM 3+1 formalism with the conformal flatness condition for the spatial three-metric. This approach is exact in 1D and has been shown to yield very accurate results also for rotational stellar collapse. We introduce new formulations of the energy equation to improve total energy conservation in relativistic and Newtonian hydro simulations with Eulerian finite-volume codes. Moreover, a modified version of the VERTEX scheme is developed that simultaneously conserves energy and lepton number with better accuracy and higher numerical stability. To verify our code, we conduct a series of tests, including a detailed comparison with published 1D results for stellar core collapse. Long-time simulations of proto-neutron star cooling over several seconds both demonstrate the robustness of the new CoCoNuT-VERTEX code and show the approximate treatment of GR effects by means of an effective gravitational potential as in PROMETHEUS-VERTEX to be remarkably accurate in 1D. (abridged)
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.