2022/01/05 by Alexandra Ruth Stewart, Li‐Ta Lo, Stewart, Alexandra Ruth +15
Arts and Humanities · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE) #Paleopathology and ancient diseases
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2201.01865
openalex publication_date 2022/01/05 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Neutron star mergers are cosmic catastrophes that produce some of the most energetic observed phenomena: short gamma-ray bursts, gravitational wave signals, and kilonovae. The latter are optical transients, powered by radioactive nuclides which are synthesized when the neutron-rich ejecta of a disrupted neutron star undergoes decompression. We model this decompression phase using data from simulations of post-merger accretion disk winds. We use smoothed particle hydrodynamics with realistic nuclear heating to model the expansion over multiple scales, from initially several thousand km to billions of km. We then render a realistic image of a kilonova ejecta as it would appear for a nearby observer. This is the first time such a visualization is performed using input from state-of-the-art accretion disk simulations, nuclear physics and atomic physics. The volume rendering in our model computes an opacity transfer function on the basis of the physical opacity, varying significantly with the inhomogeneity of the neutron richness in the ejecta. Other physical quantities such as temperature or electron fraction can be visualized using an independent color transfer function. We discuss several difficulties with the ParaView application that we encountered during the visualization process, and give descriptions of our solutions and workarounds which could be used for future improvements.