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At least 127 records · Page 7

An investigation of the multi-mode Richtmyer-Meshkov instability at a gas/HE interface using Pagosa

Here, in this work, we present a hydrocode Pagosa and explore the Richtmyer-Meshkov Instability (RMI) at an air/high explosive (HE) interface for the first time that is important but has not received much attention yet in the high explosive safety field. Thus, the presented Pagosa can be expected to predict the whole deflagration-to-detonation transition (DDT) process in future. In Pagosa, spatial discretization is implemented on cubic staggered grids by computing different variables at the vertex and the cell center, respectively, a special operator-splitting technique is employed to reduce the computational cost, and an artificial viscosity is added to handle the discontinuous shock waves in our simulations. To quantitatively evaluate the capability of Pagosa to solve these kinds of instabilities, the single mode Rayleigh-Taylor instability (RTI) and the multimode RMI at an air/SF 6 interface are first performed, respectively. The Pagosa results are compared with the related numerical solutions in the existing references and the experimental result. Moreover, a theoretical derivation of growth of RTI is also provided based on our numerical method. Subsequently, we explore the multi-mode RMI at an air/HE interface as well as the effects of several factors using Pagosa. Numerical results show that Pagosa is a powerful toolset to generate the right structures and the amplitude of RTI and RMI at an air/SF 6 interface. The solid HE can be penetrated by a strong shock wave and forms RMI deformations. The RMI at an air/HE interface behaves very different than at an air/SF 6 interface, periodic, decreased oscillation is observed due to material character, and is very sensitive to the initial simulation settings, that is, a tiny change in physical quantities will lead to a remarkable RMI structure, which is also observed in a shock bubble interaction. The findings in this work are significant, and will present a new insight for the high explosive field.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Neutron irradiation induced defects and clustering in NF616 and T91

NF616 is a third-generation ferritic martensitic steel, developed to have better creep resistance than the prior generation T91. Unlike relatively numerous studies of T91, there is a lack of understanding of the irradiation effect on the microstructural evolution and mechanical response of NF616. This work evaluated the microstructures and radiation hardening of NF616 irradiated up to 8.2 displacement per atom (dpa) at 292 °C – 431 °C, compared with T91 from two heats. Dislocation loops were observed in all investigated samples. NF616 exhibited comparable loop size but slightly lower loop density than those in the general T91 heat at 430 °C. Cavities were only observed in NF616 at 431 °C but absent at lower irradiation temperatures (292 °C and 359 °C). Ni-rich clusters were also observed in NF616 at 431 °C, while only weak Ni-clustering were observed at lower irradiation temperatures. Compared to the general T91 heat, NF616 demonstrated better swelling resistance (e.g., one third of swelling in the general T91 heat at 430 °C), a slightly higher number density of Ni-rich clusters, and slightly lower radiation hardening. The low-carbon T91 showed the greatest hardening with the largest swelling and loop sizes, despite its lowest irradiation temperature and intermediate dose. The calculated hardening from loops, cavities and Ni-rich clusters using the classic dispersed barrier-hardening model had reasonable agreement with the experiment-derived results, with the primary hardening contribution attributed to dislocation loops.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗

AI and extreme scale computing to learn and infer the physics of higher order gravitational wave modes of quasi-circular, spinning, non-precessing black hole mergers

We use artificial intelligence (AI) to learn and infer the physics of higher order gravitational wave modes of quasi-circular, spinning, non precessing binary black hole mergers. We trained AI models using 14 million waveforms, produced with the surrogate model NRHybSur3dq8, that include modes up to $\ell$ ≤ 4 and (5,5), except for (4,0) and (4,1), that describe binaries with mass-ratios $\textit{q}$ ≤ 8, individual spins $s^z_{\{1,2\}} \in$[–0.8,0.8], and inclination angle $θ \in$ [0,π]. Our probabilistic AI surrogates can accurately constrain the mass-ratio, individual spins, effective spin, and inclination angle of numerical relativity waveforms that describe such signal manifold. We compared the predictions of our AI models with Gaussian process regression, random forest, k-nearest neighbors, and linear regression, and with traditional Bayesian inference methods through the PyCBC Inference toolkit, finding that AI outperforms all these approaches in terms of accuracy, and are between three to four orders of magnitude faster than traditional Bayesian inference methods. Our AI surrogates were trained within 3.4 hours using distributed training on 1,536 NVIDIA V100 GPUs in the Summit supercomputer.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Infrared Near-Field Spectroscopy of Gold Nanotriangle Fabry-Pérot Resonances

Here, in this work, we characterize the near-field response of individual gold nanotriangles over a broad, visible-to-infrared, spectral region (200–1500 meV) using high-resolution electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) performed inside of a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM). We begin by experimentally imaging the spatial and spectral extent of each nanotriangle’s plasmonic Fabry-Pérot modes and measuring the evolution of their resonance energies with increasing edge length; thereby providing detailed information on infrared plasmon dephasing times and dispersion relations. Numerical electromagnetic simulations of the electron probe are used to interpret these experimental results and to compare the near-field electromagnetic enhancement factors of gold nanotriangles and nanorods of equal resonant energy. Taken together, this combined experimental and theoretical study provides unique insights relevant to designing noble metal plasmonic nanoparticle systems for solar energy harvesting and sensing applications in the near- and mid-infrared.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Bayesian inference of multi-messenger astrophysical data: Joint and coherent inference of gravitational waves and kilonovae

Multi-messenger observations of binary neutron star mergers can provide information on the neutron star’s equation of state (EOS) above the nuclear saturation density by directly constraining the mass-radius diagram. We present a Bayesian framework for joint and coherent analyses of multi-messenger binary neutron star signals. As a first application, we analyze the gravitational-wave GW170817 and the kilonova (kN) AT2017gfo data. These results are then combined with the most recent X-ray pulsar analyses of PSR J0030+0451 and PSR J0740+6620 to obtain new EOS constraints.We extend the bajes infrastructure with a joint likelihood for multiple datasets, support for various semi-analytical kN models, and numerical-relativity (NR)-informed relations for the mass ejecta, as well as a technique to include and marginalize over modeling uncertainties. The analysis of GW170817 used the TEOBResumS effective-one-body waveform template to model the gravitational-wave signal. The analysis of AT2017gfo used a baseline multicomponent spherically symmetric model for the kN light curves. Various constraints on the mass-radius diagram and neutron star properties were then obtained by resampling over a set of ten million parameterized EOSs, which was built under minimal assumptions (general relativity and causality).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Source term method for binary neutron stars initial data

The initial condition problem for a binary neutron star system requires a Poisson equation solver for the velocity potential with a Neumann-like boundary condition on the surface of the star. Difficulties that arise in this boundary value problem are: (a) the boundary is not known a priori, but constitutes part of the solution of the problem; (b) various terms become singular at the boundary. In this work, we present a new method to solve the fluid Poisson equation for irrotational/spinning binary neutron stars. The advantage of the new method is that it does not require complex fluid surface fitted coordinates and it can be implemented in a Cartesian grid, which is a standard choice in numerical relativity calculations. This is accomplished by employing the source term method proposed by Towers, where the boundary condition is treated as a jump condition and is incorporated as additional source terms in the Poisson equation, which is then solved iteratively. The issue of singular terms caused by vanishing density on the surface is resolved with an additional separation that shifts the computation boundary to the interior of the star. We present two-dimensional tests to show the convergence of the source term method, and we further apply this solver to a realistic three-dimensional binary neutron star problem. By comparing our solution with the one coming from the initial data solver cocal, we demonstrate agreement to approximately 1%. We report our method can be used in other problems with non-smooth solutions like in magnetized neutron stars.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Adaptive mesh refinement in binary black holes simulations

Abstract We discuss refinement criteria for the Berger–Rigoutsos (block-based) refinement algorithm in our numerical relativity code GR-Athena++ in the context of binary black hole (BBH) merger simulations. We compare three different strategies: the ‘box-in-box’ approach, the ‘sphere-in-sphere’ approach and a local criterion for refinement based on the estimation of truncation error of the finite difference scheme. We extract and compare gravitational waveforms using the three different mesh refinement methods and compare their accuracy against a calibration waveform and demonstrate that the sphere-in-sphere approach provides the best strategy overall when considering computational cost and the waveform accuracy. Ultimately, we demonstrate the capability of each mesh refinement method in accurately simulating gravitational waves from BBH systems—a crucial aspect for their application in next-generation detectors. We quantify the mismatch achievable with the different strategies by extrapolating the gravitational wave mismatch to higher resolution.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗

Sequence modeling of higher-order wave modes of quasi-circular, spinning, non-precessing binary black hole mergers

Higher-order gravitational wave modes from quasi-circular, spinning, non-precessing binary-black-hole (BBH) mergers encode rich information about the nonlinear dynamics of strong-field gravity. We present a transformer-based sequence-completion surrogate that, given an early-inspiral segment, forecasts the subsequent late inspiral, merger, and ringdown. The intended applications are (i) patching or completing expensive or interrupted numerical-relativity (NR) simulations and (ii) providing late-time cross-checks and rapid hybridization studies. The training set is built from the NRHybSur3dq8 surrogate, which provides spherical-harmonic modes up to $\ell$ ≤ 4 (excluding (4, 0) and (4,±1), and including (5, 5)) for mass ratios q ≤ 8, dimensionless spin components s$^{z}_{1,2}$ ϵ[–0.8, 0.8], and inclination angles θ ϵ [0, π]. Waveforms are supplied on the interval t ϵ [–5000M, –100 M) and the model autoregressively generates the plus and cross polarizations (h + , h x ) on t ϵ [–100 M, 130M]. Training on the Delta supercomputer with 16 NVIDIA A100 GPUs required ~15 h on more than 14 million hybrid waveforms. Evaluation on a held-out test set of 840,000 samples yields mean and median overlaps of 0.996 and 0.997, respectively, with respect to the surrogate ground truth.

black-hole merger↗

Ultralocality and slow contraction

Abstract We study the detailed process by which slow contraction smooths and flattens the universe using an improved numerical relativity code that accepts initial conditions with non-perturbativedeviations from homogeneity and isotropy along two independent spatial directions.Contrary to common descriptions of the early universe,we find that the geometry first rapidly converges to an inhomogeneous, spatially-curved and anisotropic ultralocal state in which all spatialgradient contributions to the equations of motion decrease as an exponential in time to negligible values. This is followed by a second stage in which the geometry converges to a homogeneous, spatially flat and isotropic spacetime. In particular, the decay appears to follow the same history whether the entire spacetime or only parts of it are smoothed by the end of slow contraction.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗

Dynamical attractors in contracting spacetimes dominated by kinetically coupled scalar fields

We present non-perturbative numerical relativity simulations of slowly contracting spacetimes in which the scalar field driving slow contraction is coupled to a second scalar field through an exponential non-linear σ model-type kinetic interaction. These models are important because they can generate a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of super-Hubble density fluctuations fully consistent with cosmic microwave background observations. We show that the non-linear evolution rapidly approaches a homogeneous, isotropic and flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) geometry for a wide range of inhomogeneous and anisotropic initial conditions. Ultimately, we find, the kinetic coupling causes the evolution to deflect away from flat FRW and towards a novel Kasner-like stationary point, but in general this occurs on time scales that are too long to be observationally relevant.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Magnetorotational instability in a swirling partially ionized gas

ABSTRACT The magnetorotational instability (MRI) has been proposed as the method of angular momentum transport that enables accretion in astrophysical discs. However, for weakly ionized discs, such as protoplanetary discs, it remains unclear whether the combined non-ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) effects of Ohmic resistivity, ambipolar diffusion, and the Hall effect make these discs MRI stable. While much effort has been made to simulate non-ideal MHD MRI, these simulations make simplifying assumptions and are not always in agreement with each other. Furthermore, it is difficult to directly observe the MRI astrophysically because it occurs on small scales. Here, we propose the concept of a swirling gas experiment of weakly ionized argon gas between two concentric cylinders threaded with an axial magnetic field that can be used to study non-ideal MHD MRI. For our proposed experiment, we derive the hydrodynamic equilibrium flow and a dispersion relation for MRI that includes the three non-ideal effects. We solve this dispersion relation numerically for the parameters of our proposed experiment. We find it should be possible to produce a non-ideal MRI in such an experiment because of the Hall effect, which increases the MRI growth rate when the vertical magnetic field is anti-aligned with the rotation axis. As a proof of concept, we also present experimental results for a hydrodynamic flow in an unmagnetized prototype. We find that our prototype has a small, but non-negligible, α-parameter that could serve as a baseline for comparison to our proposed magnetized experiment, which could be subject to additional turbulence from the MRI.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

What if GW190425 did not produce a black hole promptly?

ABSTRACT It is widely believed that the binary neutron star merger GW190425 produced a black hole promptly upon merger. Motivated by the potential association with the fast radio burst FRB 20190425A, which took place 2.5 h after the merger, we revisit the question of the outcome of GW190425 by means of numerical relativity simulations. We show that current laboratory and astrophysical constraints on the equation of state of dense matter do not rule out the formation of a long-lived remnant. However, the formation of a stable remnant would have produced a bright kilonova, in tension with upper limits by ZTF at the location and time of FRB 20190425A. Moreover, the ejecta would have been optically thick to radio emission for days to months, preventing a putative FRB from propagating out. The predicted dispersion measure is also several orders of magnitude larger than that observed for FRB 20190425A. Our results indicate that FRB 20190425A and GW190425 are not associated. However, we cannot completely rule out the formation of a long-lived remnant, due to the incomplete coverage of the relevant sky regions. More observations of GW190425-like events, including potential upper limit, have the potential to constrain nuclear physics. To this aim, it is important that follow-up observational campaigns of gravitational wave events are informed by the properties of the source, such as their chirp mass, and we urge the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration to promptly release them publicly.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Distinguishing prompt-collapse binary neutron star mergers from binary black Holes: Tidal effects and remnant properties

We study the properties of remnants formed in prompt-collapse binary neutron star mergers. We consider nonspinning neutron star binaries over a range of total masses and mass ratios across a set of 22 equations of state, totaling 107 numerical relativity simulations. We report the final mass and spin of the systems (including the accretion disk and ejecta) to be constrained in a narrow range—0.98 ≲ 𝑀 𝑓 /𝑀 ≲ 0.99 for the mass and 0.85 ≲ 𝑎 𝑓 ≲ 0.95 for the dimensionless spin—regardless of the binary configuration and matter effects. This sets them apart from binary black hole merger remnants. We assess the detectability of the postmerger signal in a future 40 km Cosmic Explorer observatory and find that the signal-to-noise ratio in the postmerger of an optimally located and oriented binary at a distance of 100 Mpc can range from <1 to 8, depending on the binary configuration and equation of state, with a majority of them greater than 4 in the set of simulations that we consider. We also consider the distinguishability between prompt-collapse binary neutron star and binary black hole mergers with the same masses and spins. We find that Cosmic Explorer will be able to distinguish such systems primarily via the measurement of tidal effects in the late inspiral. Neutron star binaries with reduced tidal deformability $\tilde{Λ}$ as small as ∼ 3.5 can be identified up to a distance of 100 Mpc, while neutron star binaries with $\tilde{Λ}$ ∼ 22 can be identified to distances greater than 250 Mpc. This is larger than the distance up to which the postmerger will be visible. Finally, we discuss the possible implications of our findings for the equation of state of neutron stars from the gravitational wave event GW230529.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Simulating magnetized neutron stars with discontinuous Galerkin methods

Discontinuous Galerkin methods are popular because they can achieve high order where the solution is smooth, because they can capture shocks while needing only nearest-neighbor communication, and because they are relatively easy to formulate on complex meshes. We perform a detailed comparison of various limiting strategies presented in the literature applied to the equations of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics. We compare the standard minmod /ΛΠ N limiter, the hierarchical limiter of Krivodonova, the simple WENO limiter, the HWENO limiter, and a discontinuous Galerkin-finite-difference hybrid method. The ultimate goal is to understand what limiting strategies are able to robustly simulate magnetized Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff stars without any fine-tuning of parameters. Among the limiters explored in the paper, the only limiting strategy we can endorse is a discontinuous Galerkin-finite-difference hybrid method.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Prospects for direct detection of black hole formation in neutron star mergers with next-generation gravitational-wave detectors

A direct detection of black hole formation in neutron star mergers would provide invaluable information about matter in neutron star cores and finite temperature effects on the nuclear equation of state. We study black hole formation in neutron star mergers using a set of 190 numerical relativity simulations consisting of long-lived and black-hole-forming remnants. The postmerger gravitational-wave spectrum of a long-lived remnant has greatly reduced power at a frequency 𝑓 greater than 𝑓 peak , for 𝑓 ≳ 4 kHz, with 𝑓 peak ∈ [2.5,4] kHz. On the other hand, black-hole-forming remnants exhibit excess power in the same large 𝑓 region and manifest exponential damping in the time domain characteristic of a quasinormal mode. We demonstrate that the gravitational-wave signal from a collapsed remnant is indeed a quasinormal ringing. We report on the opportunity for direct detections of black hole formation with next-generation gravitational-wave detectors such as Cosmic Explorer and Einstein Telescope and set forth the tantalizing prospect of such observations up to a distance of 100 Mpc for an optimally oriented and located source with an SNR of 4.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗

Signature of hadron-quark crossover in binary-neutron-star mergers

Here, we study observational signatures of the hadron-quark crossover in binary-neutron-star mergers by numerical-relativity simulations with various mass configurations. We employ two equations of state (EoSs) for matter consistent with inference from the observational data. In the crossover scenario the EoS is softened in a density realized in binary-neutron-star mergers and is smoothly continued to quark matter. In the phase transition scenario without crossover, the EoS remains stiff and a first-order phase transition takes place in a density out of reach of mergers. A GW170817-like system forms a remnant massive neutron star in both scenarios, and it collapses into a black hole only in the crossover scenario due to the softening while gravitational-wave emission is strong. This difference is clearly reflected in the sudden shutdown of gravitational waves. For a given EoS, the lifetime of the merger remnant is determined primarily by the total mass of the system. Identifying these features in a variety of future events with the next generation of ground-based gravitational-wave detectors will enable us to clarify details of hadron-quark transition. The mass of the accretion disk surrounding the remnant black hole is affected not only by the lifetime of the remnant but also by the mass ratio of the system. Electromagnetic emission associated with the disk outflow will also be useful for detailed investigation of the hadron-quark transition.

QCD phase transitions↗

Constraints on the Maximum Densities of Neutron Stars from Postmerger Gravitational Waves with Third-Generation Observations

Using data from 289 numerical relativity simulations of binary neutron star mergers, we identify, for the first time, a robust quasiuniversal relation connecting the postmerger peak gravitational-wave frequency and the value of the density at the center of the maximum mass nonrotating neutron star. This relation offers a new possibility for precision equation-of-state constraints with next-generation ground-based gravitational-wave interferometers. Mock Einstein Telescope observations of fiducial events indicate that Bayesian inferences can constrain the maximum density to ~15% (90% credibility level) for a single signal at the minimum sensitivity threshold for a detection. If the postmerger signal is included in a full-spectrum (inspiral-merger-postmerger) analysis of such a signal, the pressure-density function can be tightly constrained up to the maximum density, and the maximum neutron star mass can be measured with an accuracy better than 12% (90% credibility level).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Neutrino emission from binary neutron star mergers: characterising light curves and mean energies

Abstract Neutrinos are copiously emitted by neutron star mergers, due to the high temperatures reached by dense matter during the merger and its aftermath. Neutrinos influence the merger dynamics and shape the properties of the ejecta, including the resulting r -process nucleosynthesis and kilonova emission. In this work, we analyse neutrino emission from a large sample of binary neutron star merger simulations in Numerical Relativity, covering a broad range of initial masses, nuclear equation of state and viscosity treatments. We extract neutrino luminosities and mean energies, and compute quantities of interest such as the peak values, peak broadnesses, time averages and decrease time scales. We provide a systematic description of such quantities, including their dependence on the initial parameters of the system. We find that for equal-mass systems the total neutrino luminosity (several $$10^{53}{\hbox {erg}~{\hbox {s}}^{-1}}$$ 10 53 erg s - 1 ) decreases as the reduced tidal deformability increases, as a consequence of the less violent merger dynamics. Similarly, tidal disruption in asymmetric mergers leads to systematically smaller luminosities. Peak luminosities can be twice as large as the average ones. Electron antineutrino luminosities dominate (initially by a factor of 2-3) over electron neutrino ones, while electron neutrinos and heavy flavour neutrinos have similar luminosities. Mean energies are nearly constant in time and independent on the binary parameters. Their values reflect the different decoupling temperature inside the merger remnant. Despite present uncertainties in neutrino modelling, our results provide a broad and physically grounded characterisation of neutrino emission, and they can serve as a reference point to develop more sophisticated neutrino transport schemes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗