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| Project Title | Toward simulating Black Widow binaries with CASTRO. |
| Summary | We will perform preliminary simulations of Black Widow binaries, systems in which radiation from a millisecond pulsar ablates and eventually destroys a companion star. The simulations will be performed with the adaptive-mesh astrophysical simulation code CASTRO (freely available on github). The the newly-implemented radiation hydrodynamics module for for CASTRO is capable of only diffusive transport, which is not sufficient for the black widow problem, but preliminary simulations will yield important information about the relevant hydrodynamic and radiation hydrodynamic time scales and allow us to construct initial models. |
| Job Description | CASTRO has been previously run on Blue Waters, and the project will be to construct initial conditions consisting principally of a model star in hydrostatic equilibrium. Then preliminary radiation hydrodynamic simulations will provide critical information about the time, energy, and spatial scales of the radiation absorption and ablation problem. This project will be concurrent with improvements to the radiation hydrodynamics module of CASTRO that will allow realistic simulations of Black Widow Systems. The intern will contribute to all aspects of the preliminary problem, including exercising CASTRO at scale on the provided architecture, constructing the model star and initial conditions, and performing the simulations. |
| Conditions/Qualifications | Experience programming with Fortran, C++, and Python, and scientific visualization. Undergraduate Physics/Astronomy student at Stony Brook University. |
| Start Date | 06/01/2015 |
| End Date | 05/31/2016 |
| Location | Stony Brook, New York, Nuclear Astrophysics Group, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University. |
| Interns | Platon Karpov
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