| NSF Org: |
PHY Division Of Physics |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | May 16, 2017 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 16, 2017 |
| Award Number: | 1707826 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Pedro Marronetti
pmarrone@nsf.gov (703)292-7372 PHY Division Of Physics MPS Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2017 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2022 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $300,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $300,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
3400 N CHARLES ST BALTIMORE MD US 21218-2608 (443)997-1898 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
MD US 21218-2686 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
STELLAR ASTRONOMY & ASTROPHYSC, Gravity Theory, OFFICE OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY AC |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.049 |
ABSTRACT
The recent discovery of gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO ushered in a new kind of astronomy, one potentially integrating its findings with those obtained from electromagnetic and/or neutrino observations. Multi-messenger astronomy promises to revolutionize our understanding of the universe by providing dramatically contrasting views of the same objects. To understand this unprecedented wealth of observational evidence, theoretical calculations are required in order to link data with underlying physics. However, these demand the creation of new computational tools that can handle an increasingly wide range of physical treatments, characteristic scales, and levels of complexity. The main thrust of this project is to develop some of these tools.
The principal goals supported by this award are to introduce two new techniques into the repertory of physicists and astrophysicists studying strong-field gravity: multipatch methods and regularized spherical coordinates. The former is an infrastructure to permit efficient computation of heterogeneous systems involving multiple kinds of physics, multiple length scales, and multiple reference frames. The latter is a way to systematically remove from partial differential equations the singularity ordinarily arising at the polar axis. We expect both will be of great value to studies of astrophysical objects in dynamical spacetimes. To make this introduction, we will generalize our multipatch infrastructure to make it freely compatible with many codes, including Athena++, The Einstein Toolkit, and Harm3D; we will introduce regularized spherical coordinates into the numerical relativity and MHD solvers of both the Einstein Toolkit and the widely used relativistic magnetohydrodynamics code Harm3D; and we will demonstrate the results on selected science problems. With Advanced LIGO now fully operational and the detection of additional gravitational wave events imminent, we expect that there will be a surge in the number of researchers interested in performing simulations of compact binary mergers. Our new curvilinear and multipatch frameworks will greatly improve the efficiency and ease with which such simulations may be carried out, thereby improving the accuracy of the predictions made for all the messengers---gravitational waves, photons, and neutrinos---of multi-messenger astronomy.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
It is estimated that somewhere in the universe a few pairs of supermassive black holes merge every single year, leaving behind a still more massive single black hole at the centers of the galaxies where this occurs. The energy released is enormous, and the effect on galactic evolution profound, but no such event has ever been identified because the overwhelming majority of the energy is released in gravitational waves, which are as yet undetectable. Although the energy radiated in light is a small minority of the total, our instruments for light detection are so much more sensitive than those responding to gravitational waves that the light, too, should be detectable.
The long-term goal of our project is to predict both the spectrum and the time-dependence of the light associated with these events so telescopes can be used to search for them. However, many technical obstacles stand in the way of making calculations capable of predicting the character of the radiated light. It has been the goal of this specific project to devise means of overcoming the most important of these obstacles.
We have largely succeeded in doing so. We have found ways to exploit the intrinsic geometrical symmetries of these events that enable high-resolution descriptions of the system's spatial variations, while avoiding the computational cost they exact in unnecessarily short time-steps. We have also learned how to extend our previously-constructed computational apparatus for studying inhomogeneous hydrodynamic systems to include the effects of magnetic forces, which play a central role in the dynamics of matter orbiting black holes. In fact, using these computational advances we have completed a simulation of such a merger that reaches closer to the actual moment of merger than any previous work. Reaching the merger itself now lies in sight.
This effort has also had broader impacts. The new computational infrastructure we have created should be useful to many other astrophysical simulations. We have trained a number of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in the techniques of large-scale numerical simulation, skills that are valuable far beyond the confines of astrophysical research. During the first portion of this project (pre-covid), our team was active in outreach both to non-science students and to the general public, including efforts to engage deaf and hard-of-hearing students in the sciences.
Last Modified: 01/02/2023
Modified by: Julian H Krolik
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