APS April Meeting 2019
Volume 64, Number 3
Saturday–Tuesday, April 13–16, 2019;
Denver, Colorado
Sunday, April 14, 2019
1:30PM - 2:06PM
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J02.00001: From simulations of binary black holes to insights into astrophysics and gravitational waves
Invited Speaker:
Carlos O Lousto
The late orbital dynamics of spinning binary black holes remains a fascinating area of research. Among the notable spin effects observed in supercomputer simulations are the hangup effect which prompts or delays the merger of binary black holes depending on the sign of the spin-orbit coupling, the flip-flop of black hole spins in a binary, passing from aligned to antialigned periods with respect to the orbital angular momentum, the alignment instability (a case of imaginary flip-flop frequencies), and the total flip of the orbital angular momentum, leading to beaconing patterns of gravitational radiation.
Through numerical simulations it was found the large recoils of the final black hole remnant, reaching up to 5000km/s. Accurate modeling of those recoil velocities allows, for instance, to use observational measurements of recoiling supermassive quasars, like 3C 186, to infer the masses and spins of the progenitor binary.
Fitting formulas relating initial binary parameters (individual masses and spins) to the final merger properties (peak amplitudes and frequency, and final remnant mass and spin) are of interest for applications to astrophysical and gravitational wave observations. Finally, catalogs of black hole merger waveforms can be used to accurately determine the binary's parameters, directly from the observed gravitational waves.
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Sunday, April 14, 2019
2:06PM - 2:42PM
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J02.00002: Numerical relativity simulations of neutron star mergers
Invited Speaker:
David Radice
The detection of gravitational waves and light from a pair of merging neutron stars ushered in the era of multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves. Neutron star mergers have been confirmed to be progenitors to at least a fraction of short gamma-ray bursts, and one of the astrophysical sites of production for r-process elements, like gold. Neutron star mergers also offer us the opportunity to witness the behavior of matter at extreme densities, in conditions that cannot be produced in terrestrial laboratories. Neutron star merger observations could provide insight on some of the most important open questions in high-energy and nuclear astrophysics. However, their interpretation is challenging due to the complex nature of these events. Numerical relativity simulations are the only tool able to potentially connect all observables to the merger dynamics. In this talk, I will review recent simulation results, focusing on the fate of the merger remnant, and on the mass ejection during and after the mergers. I will present our efforts on the modeling of the electromagnetic counterpart to such mergers, and their applicability to joint electromagnetic and gravitational-wave analysis of the observations. Finally, I will discuss current limitations to the simulations and future prospects for this field. |
Sunday, April 14, 2019
2:42PM - 3:18PM
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J02.00003: Lessons and future prospects from the interplay of multimessenger astronomy and computational gravity
Invited Speaker:
Vasileios Paschalidis
In this talk we will review some lessons learned about the nuclear equation of state above the nuclear saturation density, and the potential environments of binary black holes from the interplay of computational gravity with multimessenger observations of compact binaries.
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