A view of the flame propagating through the thin helium layer on a rapidly rotating neutron star -- a model for an X-ray burst. This image shows the composition; the flame started out as a small hotspot that is spreading radially across the surface. Image: AMReX Astro Team and Michael Zingale, Stony Brook University.
This INCITE project uses the team's Castro code to carry out high-performance, robust, and accurate simulations to advance our understanding ofXRBs and SN Ia, pushing to model a larger fraction of the neutron star surface.
This project will build upon the success of earlier INCITE awards that explored astrophysical thermonuclear explosions, in particular, Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia) and x-ray bursts(XRBs). The team will use their Castro code to carry out high-performance, robust, and accurate simulations to advance our understanding ofXRBs and SN Ia, as well as related physics (thermonuclear combustion and detonations).
In the area of XRBs, the researchers will greatly expand their work to model thermonuclear flame propagation across the surface of a neutron star. They will explore larger reaction networks and the effect of magnetic fields, and push to model a larger fraction of the neutron star surface. For their SN Ia studies, the team will focus on the double-detonation model. Both XRBs and SN Ia are multiscale, multiphysics problems that rely on the interplay between reactions and hydrodynamics. The team’s open-source Castro code has a new time-integration that is designed to strongly couple these processes, enabling the team to carry out accurate and efficient simulations of reacting flows.
