PROFESSOR MATTHEW DUEZ

Compact binary mergers, involving neutron stars, can produce massive ejecta and black holes with neutrino-cooled accretion flows. The surviving matter can produce electromagnetic signals to accompany and complement the gravitational wave signal from the inspiral and merger. The special role of numerical relativity is to follow the late inspiral and early merger, from the time tidal effects begin to strongly influence the inspiral to the time ejecta is flowing out ballistically, and the remnant accretion disk has come to some sort of thermal equilibrium. In this colloquium, the speaker will describe the progress in SpEC simulations of compact object (especially black hole-neutron star) mergers with microphysics. By including multiple candidate nuclear equations of state, neutrino emission effects, and magneto-hydrodynamics, we attempt a realistic treatment of post-merger systems.