WoU-MMA: Aspects of Compact Object Mergers

该奖项支持相对论和相对论天体物理学的研究，并阐述了美国国家科学基金会“宇宙之窗”宏伟构想的优先领域。LIGO的第一次探测带来了引力波时代的开始，伴随着许多令人兴奋的事情，这个项目试图研究和模拟在这些探测中观察到的系统类型。特别是，这项工作将在用于模拟此类系统的数值代码中实现包括磁和中微子冷却和加热效应在内的许多物理过程。由于几个不同的原因，中子星物质预计会发生非常高密度的相变，这个项目将研究这种相变对引力波特征和电磁发射可能产生的影响范围。这项研究将有助于促进利用LIGO和电磁望远镜以及未来的天文台所取得的科学成果。该项目将培训学生和其他人员，其研究将得到广泛传播。为了推动在非真空、致密物体合并中实现的多信使科学，该项目寻求继续开发分布式和自适应代码基础设施，在相对论、磁流体力学中模拟此类合并。除了磁效应，紧凑天体双星合并和合并后的模拟还将采用真实的状态方程，以及中微子加热和冷却。此外，采用与基本物理无关的分段多变状态方程中的高密度相变模型，将研究合并中此类相变的动力学范围。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports research in relativity and relativistic astrophysics and it addresses the priority areas of NSF's "Windows on the Universe" Big Idea. Much excitement has accompanied the beginning of the gravitational wave era ushered in by LIGO's first detections, and this project seeks to study and model the types of systems observed in these detections. In particular, this work will implement a number of physical processes including magnetic and neutrino cooling and heating effects in a numerical code used to simulate such systems. For a few different reasons, a phase transition at very high densities is expected in neutron star matter, and this project will study what range of effects such a transition could have on both the gravitational wave signature and electromagnetic emissions. This study will contribute to furthering the science obtained with LIGO and electromagnetic telescopes as well as future observatories. The project will train students and other personnel and its research will be broadly disseminated.In an effort to push forward the multi-messenger science achieved in the merger of non-vacuum, compact object mergers, this project seeks the continued development of a distributed and adaptive code infrastructure that models such mergers within relativistic, magnetohydrodynamics. In addition to magnetic effects, realistic equations of state, along with neutrino heating and cooling, will be adopted in simulations of the merger and post-merger of compact object binaries. In addition, adopting a model of a high density phase transition in a piecewise-polytropic equation of state agnostic to the underlying physics, the range of dynamics for such transitions in mergers will be studied.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.