Academic literature on the topic 'Numerical Relativistic Hydrodynamics'

Hydrodynamics has been successful in providing a good description of the bulk dynamics in ultra-relativistic heavy ion collisions. In this brief review, we provide basics of the theory of viscous hydrodynamics. Topics covered include derivation of the 2nd order viscous hydrodynamics from the linear response theory and kinetic theory, viscous anisotropic hydrodynamics, and numerical implementation of relativistic hydrodynamics.

ABSTRACT We consider the relativistic hydrodynamics of non-perfect fluids with the goal of determining a formulation that is suited for numerical integration in special-relativistic and general-relativistic scenarios. To this end, we review the various formulations of relativistic second-order dissipative hydrodynamics proposed so far and present in detail a particular formulation that is fully general, causal, and can be cast into a 3+1 flux-conservative form, as the one employed in modern numerical-relativity codes. As an example, we employ a variant of this formulation restricted to a relaxation-type equation for the bulk viscosity in the general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics code bhac. After adopting the formulation for a series of standard and non-standard tests in 1+1-dimensional special-relativistic hydrodynamics, we consider a novel general-relativistic scenario, namely, the stationary, spherically symmetric, viscous accretion on to a black hole. The newly developed solution – which can exhibit even considerable deviations from the inviscid counterpart – can be used as a testbed for numerical codes simulating non-perfect fluids on curved backgrounds.

Numerical simulations of supersonic jets are able to explain the structures observed in many VLA images of radio sources. The improvements achieved in classical simulations (see Hardee, these proceedings) are in contrast with the almost complete lack of relativistic simulations the reason being that numerical difficulties arise from the highly relativistic flows typical of extragalactic jets. For our study, we have developed a two-dimensional code which is based on (i) an explicit conservative differencing of the special relativistic hydrodynamics (SRH) equations and (ii) the use of an approximate Riemann solver (see Martí et al. 1995a,b and references therein).

AbstractUnderstanding event-by-event correlations and fluctuations is crucial for the comprehension of the dynamics of heavy ion collisions. Relativistic hydrodynamics is an elegant tool for modelling these phenomena; however, such simulations are time-consuming, and conventional CPU calculations are not suitable for event-by-event calculations. This work presents a feasibility study of a new hydrodynamic code that employs graphics processing units together with a general MUSTA-FORCE algorithm (Multi-Stage Riemann Algorithm – First-Order Centred Scheme) to deliver a high-performance yet universal tool for event-by-event hydrodynamic simulations. We also investigate the performance of selected slope limiters that reduce the amount of numeric oscillations and diffusion in the presence of strong discontinuities and shock waves. The numerical results are compared to the exact solutions to assess the code’s accuracy.

This thesis investigates numerical techniques for modelling sharp interfaces between relativistic fluids. The motivation for this work lies in obtaining accurate models of neutron star interiors for use in multidimensional simulations in general relativity. The interior structure of a neutron star is believed to contain several regions, often separated by sharp transition layers. These layers are too thin to be explicitly incorporated in a numerical simulation of the entire star. We investigate how techniques can be developed to model these layers as sharp interfaces, across which the matter model can change, with the microphysical behaviour of the transition layer described through some appropriate boundary conditions. The physical situations in which strong, detectable, gravitational waves are produced are, by their nature, violent events. As a result, we expect that large non-linear features, such as shock waves, will be formed. Therefore it is essential that the techniques developed to incorporate these sharp interfaces allow for their interaction with non-linear features in a stable manner numerically. The techniques required for modelling sharp interfaces between two fluid components has not previously been considered in relativity. However, in Newtonian computational fluid dynamics, the boundary conditions required for stable, accurate behaviour across a sharp interface between two fluids, modelled using level set methods, have been developed. These techniques lend themselves naturally to an extension to the relativistic situations we wish to consider. In this thesis we start from the Ghost Fluid Method of Fedkiw et al. We first investigate whether it can be extended to simple relativistic situations, hence use special relativity in 1+1 dimensions. In order to use this method in neutron star simulations, however, full general relativity is required. We therefore extend these initial results to a spherically symmetric self-gravitating body in 1+1 dimensional general relativity. Finally, since gravitational wave production requires a fully asymmetric system, we show that our method extends to multidimensional relativistic situations. To this end, the final chapter presents results using 2+1 dimensional special relativistic simulations.

This dissertation describes a multidimensional relativistic hydrodynamic code which solves the special relativistic hydrodynamic equations as a hyperbolic system of conservation laws based on the total variation diminishing (TVD) scheme. Several standard tests and test simulations are presented to demonstrate the accuracy, robustness and flexibility of the code. Using this code we have studied three-dimensional hydrodynamic interactions of relativistic extragalactic jets with two-phase ambient media. The deflection angle of the jet is influenced more by the density contrast of the cloud than by the beam Mach number of the jet, and a relativistic jet with low relativistic beam Mach number can eventually be slightly bent after it crosses the dense cloud. Relativistic jet impacts on dense clouds do not necessarily destroy the clouds completely, and much of the cloud body can survive as a coherent blob due to the combination of the geometric influence of off-axis collisions and the lower rate of cloud fragmentation through the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability for relativistic flows. We find that relativistic jets interacting with clouds can produce synchrotron emission knots similar to structures observed in many VLBI-scale radio sources and the synchrotron emission peaks right before the jet passes through the cloud.

Numerical general relativity has typically been used in studying 1+1 dimensional spherically symmetric spacetimes, and more recently, 3+1 dimensional spacetimes without any symmetries. In this thesis, an intermediate case - 2+1+1-dimensional axisymmetric spacetimes - are studied. In the first part, the equations of general relativity are developed for a general axisymmetric spacetime. This uses the Geroch reduction, and this is generalised to find evolution equations for the matter terms. The conditions for regularity on the symmetry axis are derived for several types of tensor, and this is used to help define appropriate variables for numerical evolution. The characteristic structure of both the geometry and the matter evolution systems is given. Next, the numerical methods used to solve the equations are described. The elliptic constraint equations are solved using multigrid, and the hyperbolic evolution equations are evolved using High Resolution Shock Capturing Methods, using WENO-3 and the Maquina flux solver. The iterative Crank Nicholson method is also described as an alternative method of evolving the geometry equations. The third part of the thesis considers a 1+1-dimensional plane-symmetric spacetime, with perfect fluid matter. Several versions of the equations, with different characteristic structures, are derived. A linearised version of the equations shows that discontinuities may be present in the second derivatives of metric terms, and this is backed up by a variety of numerical results evolved using the non-linear equations. These numerical results also show that the numerical methods used to evolve the geometry equations must be able to deal with discontinuities if the expected order of accuracy is to be maintained. Finally, results from the axisymmetric code are presented. In vacuum, Brill waves are briefly studied, as well as some test problems. With a perfect fluid, the standard shocktube problem is used to test the code, and perturbed, rotating neutron stars are studied.

This Thesis puts its focus on the physics of neutron stars and its description with methods of numerical relativity. In the first step, a new numerical framework the Whisky2D code will be developed, which solves the relativistic equations of hydrodynamics in axisymmetry. Therefore we consider an improved formulation of the conserved form of these equations. The second part will use the new code to investigate the critical behaviour of two colliding neutron stars. Considering the analogy to phase transitions in statistical physics, we will investigate the evolution of the entropy of the neutron stars during the whole process. A better understanding of the evolution of thermodynamical quantities, like the entropy in critical process, should provide deeper understanding of thermodynamics in relativity. More specifically, we have written the Whisky2D code, which solves the general-relativistic hydrodynamics equations in a flux-conservative form and in cylindrical coordinates. This of course brings in 1/r singular terms, where r is the radial cylindrical coordinate, which must be dealt with appropriately. In the above-referenced works, the flux operator is expanded and the 1/r terms, not containing derivatives, are moved to the right-hand-side of the equation (the source term), so that the left hand side assumes a form identical to the one of the three-dimensional (3D) Cartesian formulation. We call this the standard formulation. Another possibility is not to split the flux operator and to redefine the conserved variables, via a multiplication by r. We call this the new formulation. The new equations are solved with the same methods as in the Cartesian case. From a mathematical point of view, one would not expect differences between the two ways of writing the differential operator, but, of course, a difference is present at the numerical level. Our tests show that the new formulation yields results with a global truncation error which is one or more orders of magnitude smaller than those of alternative and commonly used formulations. The second part of the Thesis uses the new code for investigations of critical phenomena in general relativity. In particular, we consider the head-on-collision of two neutron stars in a region of the parameter space where two final states a new stable neutron star or a black hole, lay close to each other. In 1993, Choptuik considered one-parameter families of solutions, S[P], of the Einstein-Klein-Gordon equations for a massless scalar field in spherical symmetry, such that for every P > P⋆, S[P] contains a black hole and for every P < P⋆, S[P] is a solution not containing singularities. He studied numerically the behavior of S[P] as P → P⋆ and found that the critical solution, S[P⋆], is universal, in the sense that it is approached by all nearly-critical solutions regardless of the particular family of initial data considered. All these phenomena have the common property that, as P approaches P⋆, S[P] approaches a universal solution S[P⋆] and that all the physical quantities of S[P] depend only on |P − P⋆|. The first study of critical phenomena concerning the head-on collision of NSs was carried out by Jin and Suen in 2007. In particular, they considered a series of families of equal-mass NSs, modeled with an ideal-gas EOS, boosted towards each other and varied the mass of the stars, their separation, velocity and the polytropic index in the EOS. In this way they could observe a critical phenomenon of type I near the threshold of black-hole formation, with the putative solution being a nonlinearly oscillating star. In a successive work, they performed similar simulations but considering the head-on collision of Gaussian distributions of matter. Also in this case they found the appearance of type-I critical behaviour, but also performed a perturbative analysis of the initial distributions of matter and of the merged object. Because of the considerable difference found in the eigenfrequencies in the two cases, they concluded that the critical solution does not represent a system near equilibrium and in particular not a perturbed Tolmann-Oppenheimer-Volkoff (TOV) solution. In this Thesis we study the dynamics of the head-on collision of two equal-mass NSs using a setup which is as similar as possible to the one considered above. While we confirm that the merged object exhibits a type-I critical behaviour, we also argue against the conclusion that the critical solution cannot be described in terms of equilibrium solution. Indeed, we show that, in analogy with what is found in, the critical solution is effectively a perturbed unstable solution of the TOV equations. Our analysis also considers fine-structure of the scaling relation of type-I critical phenomena and we show that it exhibits oscillations in a similar way to the one studied in the context of scalar-field critical collapse.
Diese Arbeit legt seinen Schwerpunkt auf die Physik von Neutronensternen und deren Beschreibung mit Methoden der numerischen Relativitätstheorie. Im ersten Schritt wird eine neue numerische Umgebung, der Whisky2D Code entwickelt, dieser löst die relativistischen Gleichungen der Hydrodynamik in Axialymmetrie. Hierzu betrachten wir eine verbesserte Formulierung der sog. "flux conserved formulation" der Gleichungen. Im zweiten Teil wird der neue Code verwendet
um das kritische Verhalten zweier kollidierenden Neutronensternen zu untersuchen. In Anbetracht der Analogie, um Übergänge in der statistischen Physik Phase werden wir die Entwicklung der Entropie der Neutronensterne während des gesamten Prozesses betrachten. Ein besseres Verständnis der Evolution von thermodynamischen Größen, wie der Entropie in kritischer Prozess, sollte zu einem tieferen Verständnis der relativistischen Thermodynamik führen. Der Whisky2D Code, zur Lösung Gleichungen relativistischer Hydrodynamik wurde in einer „flux conserved form“ und in zylindrischen Koordinaten geschrieben. Hierdurch entstehen 1 / r singuläre Terme, wobei r der ist, die entsprechend behandelt werden müssen. In früheren Arbeiten, wird der Operator expandiert und die 1 / r spezifisch Therme auf die rechte Seite geschrieben, so dass die linke Seite eine Form annimmt, die identisch ist mit der kartesischen Formulierung. Wir nennen dies die Standard-Formulierung. Eine andere Möglichkeit ist, die Terme nicht zu expandieren, den und den 1/r Term in die Gleichung hinein zu ziehen. Wir nennen dies die Neue-Formulierung. Die neuen Gleichungen werden mit den gleichen Verfahren wie im kartesischen Fall gelöst. Aus mathematischer Sicht ist keine Unterschiede zwischen den beiden Formulierungen zu erwarten, erst die numerische Sicht zeigt die Unterschiede auf. Versuche zeigen, dass die Neue-Formulierung numerische Fehler um mehrere Größenordnungen reduziert. Der zweite Teil der Dissertation verwendet den neuen Code für die Untersuchung kritischer Phänomene in der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie. Insbesondere betrachten wir die Kopf-auf-Kollision zweier Neutronensterne in einem Bereich des Parameter Raums, deren zwei mögliche Endzustände entweder einen neuen stabilen Neutronenstern oder ein Schwarzes Loch darstellen. Im Jahr 1993, betrachtete Choptuik Ein-Parameter-Familien von Lösungen, S [P], der Einstein-Klein-Gordon-Gleichung für ein masseloses Skalarfeld in sphärischer Symmetrie, so dass für jedes P> P ⋆, S[P] ein Schwarzes Loch enthalten ist und jedes P