Year: 2015
Type: article
Abstract: We present an open-source update to the spherically symmetric, general-relativistic hydrodynamics, core-collapse supernova (CCSN) code GR1D . The source code is available at http://www.GR1Dcode.org . We extend its capabilities to include a general-relativistic treatment of neutrino transport based on the moment formalisms of Shibata et al. and Cardall et al. We pay special attention to implementing and testing numerical methods and approximations that lessen the computational demand of the transport scheme by removing the need to invert large matrices. This is especially important for the implementation and development of moment-like transport methods in two and three dimensions. A critical component of neutrino transport calculations is the neutrino–matter interaction coefficients that describe the production, absorption, scattering, and annihilation of neutrinos. In this article we also describe our open-source neutrino interaction library NuLib (available at http://www.nulib.org ). We believe that an open-source approach to describing these interactions is one of the major steps needed to progress toward robust models of CCSNe and robust predictions of the neutrino signal. We show, via comparisons to full Boltzmann neutrino-transport simulations of CCSNe, that our neutrino transport code performs remarkably well. Furthermore, we show that the methods and approximations we employ to increase efficiency do not decrease the fidelity of our results. We also test the ability of our general-relativistic transport code to model failed CCSNe by evolving a 40-solar-mass progenitor to the onset of collapse to a black hole.
Author: Evan O’Connor
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: The Road to Black Hole Formation and Gamma-Ray Bursts - Bringing together Core-Collapse Supernova Theory and Numerical Relativity, G433322167, G4518818167, G58316358, Central Engine Models for Extreme Core-Collapse Supernovae and Long Gamma-Ray Bursts, G6273510985, G767601387, G8210229802, MRI-R2: Acquisition of a Compute Cluster for High-Fidelity Simulations of Gravitational Wave Sources -- Facilitating LIGO and Enabling Multi-Messenger Astronomy
OpenAlex ID: W1943696418