General Relativistic Neutrino Radiative Transport in Astrophysical Simulations
Steven Fromm, Michigan State University
Neutrinos play a critical role in astrophysical events, such as core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) and neutron star mergers (NSM): they provide an important energy transport mechanism and significantly impact nucleosynthesis, particularly production of the heaviest of elements. The high-energy and high-density scales involved in CCSNe and NSMs preclude studying these events experimentally, so we must rely on observations and simulations based on theoretical models. With an increasing number of multi-messenger observations (e.g., electromagnetic and gravitational waves from an NSM), it is critical to understand the physics involved in these events in order to understand the observations. To model these events, large multi-scale, multi-physics simulations are necessary, where everything from reactions of the neutrinos with nucleons to the large-scale dynamics governed by general relativity (GR) impact these systems. To accurately simulate the neutrino radiation, detailed GR radiative transport calculations must be coupled to GR (magneto-)hydrodynamics and dynamic spacetime solvers. In this poster I will highlight some of my recent work on adding a fully GR neutrino radiative transport solver to existing GR hydrodynamics simulations and focus on the computational challenges involved with solving a four-dimensional (or higher) problem in what are typically three-dimensional codes.
Abstract Author(s): Steven Fromm