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Peter Anninos

Publications and source records attributed to Peter Anninos.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2014

Update on 3D Moving Mesh Simulations of Galactic Center Cloud G2

Using three-dimensional, moving-mesh simulations, we investigate the future evolution of the recently discovered gas cloud G2 traveling through the galactic center. From our simulations we expect an average feeding rate onto Sgr A* in the range of $(5-19) \times 10^{-8} M_\odot\mathrm{~yr}^{-1}$ beginning in 2014. This accretion varies by less than a factor of three on timescales of about 1 month, and shows no more than a factor of 10 difference between the maximum and minimum observed rates within any given model. These rates are comparable to the current estimated accretion rate in the immediate vicinity of Sgr A*, although they represent only a small (<10%) increase over the current expected feeding rate at the effective inner boundary of our simulations $(r_\mathrm{acc} = 750 R_S \sim 10^{15} \mathrm{cm})$. We also explore multiple possible equations of state to describe the gas. In examining the Br-$γ$ light curves produced from our simulations, we find that all of our isothermal models predict significant (factor of 10) enhancements in the luminosity of G2 as it approaches pericenter, in conflict with observations. Models that instead allow the cloud to heat as it is compressed do better at matching observations.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2014

Three-Dimensional Moving-Mesh Simulations of Galactic Center Cloud G2

Using three-dimensional, moving-mesh simulations, we investigate the future evolution of the recently discovered gas cloud G2 traveling through the galactic center. We consider the case of a spherical cloud initially in pressure equilibrium with the background. Our suite of simulations explores the following parameters: the equation of state, radial profiles of the background gas, and start times for the evolution. Our primary focus is on how the fate of this cloud will affect the future activity of Sgr A*. From our simulations we expect an average feeding rate in the range of $5-19 \times 10^{-8}$ solar masses per year beginning in 2013 and lasting for at least 7 years (our simulations stop in year 2020). The accretion varies by less than a factor of three on timescales <1 month, and shows no more than a factor of 10 difference between the maximum and minimum. These rates are comparable to the current estimated accretion rate in the immediate vicinity of Sgr A*, although they represent only a small (<5%) increase over the current expected feeding rate at the effective inner boundary of our simulations. Therefore, the break up of cloud G2 may have only a minimal effect on the brightness and variability of Sgr A* over the next decade. This is because current models of the galactic center predict that most of the gas will be caught up in outflows. However, if the accreted G2 material can remain cold, it may not mix well with the hot, diffuse background gas, and instead accrete efficiently onto Sgr A*. Further observations of G2 will give us an unprecedented opportunity to test this idea. The break up of the cloud itself may also be observable. By tracking the amount of cloud energy that is dissipated during our simulations, we are able to get a rough estimate of the luminosity associated with its tidal disruption; we find values of a few $10^{36}$ erg/s.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2012

Numerical Simulations of Optically Thick Accretion onto a Black Hole - I. Spherical Case

Modeling the radiation generated by accreting matter is an important step towards realistic simulations of black hole accretion disks, especially at high accretion rates. To this end, we have recently added radiation transport to the existing general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic code, Cosmos++. However, before attempting to model radiative accretion disks, we have tested the new code using a series of shock tube and Bondi (spherical inflow) problems. The four radiative shock tube tests, first presented by Farris et al. (2008), have known analytic solutions, allowing us to calculate errors and convergence rates for our code. The Bondi problem only has an analytic solution when radiative processes are ignored, but is pertinent because it is closer to the physics we ultimately want to study. In our simulations, we include Thomson scattering and thermal bremsstrahlung in the opacity, focusing exclusively on the super-Eddington regime. Unlike accretion onto bodies with solid surfaces, super-Eddington accretion onto black holes does not produce super-Eddington luminosity. In our examples, despite accreting at up to 300 times the Eddington rate, our measured luminosity is always several orders of magnitude below Eddington.

astro-ph.IM↗
arXiv2009

Dynamical Bar-Mode Instability in Differentially Rotating Magnetized Neutron Stars

This paper presents a numerical study over a wide parameter space of the likelihood of the dynamical bar-mode instability in differentially rotating magnetized neutron stars. The innovative aspect of this study is the incorporation of magnetic fields in such a context, which have thus far been neglected in the purely hydrodynamical simulations available in the literature. The investigation uses the Cosmos++ code which allows us to perform three dimensional simulations on a cylindrical grid at high resolution. A sample of Newtonian magneto-hydrodynamical simulations starting from a set of models previously analyzed by other authors without magnetic fields has been performed, providing estimates of the effects of magnetic fields on the dynamical bar-mode deformation of rotating neutron stars. Overall, our results suggest that the effect of magnetic fields are not likely to be very significant in realistic configurations. Only in the most extreme cases are the magnetic fields able to suppress growth of the bar mode.

astro-ph.SR↗
arXiv2008

Application of the Cubed-Sphere Grid to Tilted Black-Hole Accretion Disks

In recent work we presented the first results of global general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations of tilted (or misaligned) accretion disks around rotating black holes. The simulated tilted disks showed dramatic differences from comparable untilted disks, such as asymmetrical accretion onto the hole through opposing "plunging streams" and global precession of the disk powered by a torque provided by the black hole. However, those simulations used a traditional spherical-polar grid that was purposefully underresolved along the pole, which prevented us from assessing the behavior of any jets that may have been associated with the tilted disks. To address this shortcoming we have added a block-structured "cubed-sphere" grid option to the Cosmos++ GRMHD code, which will allow us to simultaneously resolve the disk and polar regions. Here we present our implementation of this grid and the results of a small suite of validation tests intended to demonstrate that the new grid performs as expected. The most important test in this work is a comparison of identical tilted disks, one evolved using our spherical-polar grid and the other with the cubed-sphere grid. We also demonstrate an interesting dependence of the early-time evolution of our disks on their orientation with respect to the grid alignment. This dependence arises from the differing treatment of current sheets within the disks, especially whether they are aligned with symmetry planes of the grid or not.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2007

Global General Relativistic MHD Simulation of a Tilted Black-Hole Accretion Disk

This paper presents a continuation of our efforts to numerically study accretion disks that are misaligned (tilted) with respect to the rotation axis of a Kerr black hole. Here we present results of a global numerical simulation which fully incorporates the effects of the black hole spacetime as well as magnetorotational turbulence that is the primary source of angular momentum transport in the flow. This simulation shows dramatic differences from comparable simulations of untilted disks. Accretion onto the hole occurs predominantly through two opposing plunging streams that start from high latitudes with respect to both the black-hole and disk midplanes. This is due to the aspherical nature of the gravitational spacetime around the rotating black hole. These plunging streams start from a larger radius than would be expected for an untilted disk. In this regard the tilted black hole effectively acts like an untilted black hole of lesser spin. Throughout the duration of the simulation, the main body of the disk remains tilted with respect to the symmetry plane of the black hole; thus there is no indication of a Bardeen-Petterson effect in the disk at large. The torque of the black hole instead principally causes a global precession of the main disk body. In this simulation the precession has a frequency of $3 (M_\odot/M)$ Hz, a value consistent with many observed low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations. However, this value is strongly dependent on the size of the disk, so this frequency may be expected to vary over a large range.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2007

3D Relativistic MHD Simulation of a Tilted Accretion Disk Around a Rapidly Rotating Black Hole

We posit that accreting compact objects, including stellar mass black holes and neutron stars as well as supermassive black holes, may undergo extended periods of accretion during which the angular momentum of the disk at large scales is misaligned with that of the compact object. In such a scenario, Lense-Thirring precession caused by the rotating compact object can dramatically affect the disk. In this presentation we describe results from a three-dimensional relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulation of an MRI turbulent disk accreting onto a tilted rapidly rotating black hole. For this case, the disk does not achieve the commonly described Bardeen-Petterson configuration; rather, it remains nearly planar, undergoing a slow global precession. Accretion from the disk onto the hole occurs predominantly through two opposing plunging streams that start from high latitudes with respect to both the black-hole and disk midplanes. This is a consequence of the non-sphericity of the gravitational spacetime of the black hole.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2006

Numerical Modeling of the Radio Nebula from the 2004 December 27 Giant Flare of SGR 1806-20

We use the relativistic hydrodynamics code Cosmos++ to model the evolution of the radio nebula triggered by the Dec. 27, 2004 giant flare event of soft gamma repeater 1806-20. We primarily focus on the rebrightening and centroid motion occurring subsequent to day 20 following the flare event. We model this period as a mildly relativistic (gamma ~ 1.07 - 1.67) jetted outflow expanding into the interstellar medium (ISM). We demonstrate that a jet with total energy ~ 10^46 ergs confined to a half opening angle ~ 20 degrees fits the key observables of this event, e.g. the flux lightcurve, emission map centroid position, and aspect ratio. In particular, we find excellent agreement with observations if the rebrightening is due to the jet, moving at 0.5c and inclined ~ 0 - 40 degrees toward the observer, colliding with a density discontinuity in the ISM at a radius of several 10^16 cm. We also find that a jet with a higher velocity, >~ 0.7c, and larger inclination, >~ 70 degrees, moving into a uniform ISM can fit the observations in general, but tends to miss the details of rebrightening. The latter, uniform ISM model predicts an ISM density more than 100 times lower than that of the former model, and thus suggests an independent test which might discriminate between the two. One of the strongest constraints of both models is that the data seems to require a non-uniform jet in order to be well fit.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2005

Cosmos++: Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics on Unstructured Grids with Local Adaptive Refinement

A new code and methodology are introduced for solving the general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) equations in fixed background spacetimes using time-explicit, finite-volume discretization. The code has options for solving the GRMHD equations using traditional artificial-viscosity (AV) or non-oscillatory central difference (NOCD) methods, or a new extended AV (eAV) scheme using artificial-viscosity together with a dual energy-flux-conserving formulation. The dual energy approach allows for accurate modeling of highly relativistic flows at boost factors well beyond what has been achieved to date by standard artificial viscosity methods. It provides the benefit of Godunov methods in capturing high Lorentz boosted flows but without complicated Riemann solvers, and the advantages of traditional artificial viscosity methods in their speed and flexibility. Additionally, the GRMHD equations are solved on an unstructured grid that supports local adaptive mesh refinement using a fully threaded oct-tree (in three dimensions) network to traverse the grid hierarchy across levels and immediate neighbors. A number of tests are presented to demonstrate robustness of the numerical algorithms and adaptive mesh framework over a wide spectrum of problems, boosts, and astrophysical applications, including relativistic shock tubes, shock collisions, magnetosonic shocks, Alfven wave propagation, blast waves, magnetized Bondi flow, and the magneto-rotational instability in Kerr black hole spacetimes.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2005

Hydrodynamic Simulations of Tilted Thick-Disk Accretion onto a Kerr Black Hole

We present results from fully general relativistic three-dimensional numerical studies of thick-disk accretion onto a rapidly-rotating (Kerr) black hole with a spin axis that is tilted (not aligned) with the angular momentum vector of the disk. We initialize the problem with the solution for an aligned, constant angular momentum, accreting thick disk, which is then allowed to respond to the Lense-Thirring precession of the tilted black hole. The precession causes the disk to warp, beginning at the inner edge and moving out on roughly the Lense-Thirring precession timescale. The propagation of the warp stops at a radius in the disk at which other dynamical timescales, primarily the azimuthal sound-crossing time, become shorter than the precession time. At this point, the warp effectively freezes into the disk and the evolution becomes quasi-static, except in cases where the sound-crossing time in the bulk of the disk is shorter than the local precession timescale. We see evidence that such disks undergo near solid-body precession after the initial warping has frozen in. Simultaneous to the warping of the disk, there is also a tendency for the midplane to align with the symmetry plane of the black hole due to the preferential accretion of the most tilted disk gas. This alignment is not as pronounced, however, as it would be if more efficient angular momentum transport (e.g. from viscosity or magneto-rotational instability) were considered.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2004

Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations of Shock Interactions with Radiative Clouds

We present results from two-dimensional numerical simulations of the interactions between magnetized shocks and radiative clouds. Our primary goal is to characterize the dynamical evolution of the shocked clouds. We perform runs in both the strong and weak magnetic field limits and consider three different field orientations. For the geometries considered, we generally find that magnetic fields external to, but concentrated near, the surface of the cloud suppress the growth of destructive hydrodynamic instabilities. External fields also increase the compression of the cloud by effectively acting as a confinement mechanism driven by the interstellar flow and local field stretching. This can have a dramatic effect on both the efficiency of radiative cooling, which tends to increase with increasing magnetic field strength, and on the size and distribution of condensed cooled fragments. In contrast, fields acting predominately internally to the cloud tend to resist compression, thereby inhibiting cooling. We observe that, even at modest strengths, internal fields can completely suppress low-temperature cooling.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2003

Jet-Induced Star Formation

Jets from radio galaxies can have dramatic effects on the medium through which they propagate. We review observational evidence for jet-induced star formation in low ('FR-I') and high ('FR-II') luminosity radio galaxies, at low and high redshifts respectively. We then discuss numerical simulations which are aimed to explain a jet-induced starburst ('Minkowski's Object') in the nearby FR-I type radio galaxy NGC 541. We conclude that jets can induce star formation in moderately dense (10 cm-3), warm (10,000 K) gas; that this may be more common in the dense environments of forming, active galaxies; and that this may provide a mechanism for 'positive' feedback from AGN in the galaxy formation process.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2003

Radiative Shock-Induced Collapse of Intergalactic Clouds

Accumulating observational evidence for a number of radio galaxies suggests an association between their jets and regions of active star formation. The standard picture is that shocks generated by the jet propagate through an inhomogeneous medium and trigger the collapse of overdense clouds, which then become active star-forming regions. In this contribution, we report on recent hydrodynamic simulations of radiative shock-cloud interactions using two different cooling models: an equilibrium cooling-curve model assuming solar metallicities and a non-equilibrium chemistry model appropriate for primordial gas clouds. We consider a range of initial cloud densities and shock speeds in order to quantify the role of cooling in the evolution. Our results indicate that for moderate cloud densities (>1 cm^{-3}) and shock Mach numbers (<20), cooling processes can be highly efficient and result in more than 50% of the initial cloud mass cooling to below 100 K. We also use our results to estimate the final H_2 mass fraction for the simulations that use the non-equilibrium chemistry package. This is an important measurement, since H_2 is the dominant coolant for a primordial gas cloud. We find peak H_2 mass fractions of >0.01 and total H_2 mass fractions of >10^{-5} for the cloud gas. Finally, we compare our results with the observations of jet-induced star formation in ``Minkowski's Object.'' We conclude that its morphology, star formation rate (~ 0.3M_solar/yr) and stellar mass (~ 1.2 x 10^7 M_solar) can be explained by the interaction of a 90,000 km/s jet with an ensemble of moderately dense (~ 10 cm^{-3}), warm (10^4 K) intergalactic clouds in the vicinity of its associated radio galaxy at the center of the galaxy cluster.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2003

Supernova Enrichment of Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies

(Abridged) Many dwarf galaxies exhibit sub-Solar metallicities, with some star-to-star variation, despite often containing multiple generations of stars. The total metal content in these systems is much less than expected from the heavy element production of massive stars in each episode of star formation. Such a deficiency implies that a substantial fraction of the enriched material has been lost from these small galaxies. Mass ejection from dwarf galaxies may have important consequences for the evolution of the intergalactic medium and for the evolution of massive galaxies, which themselves may have formed via the merger of smaller systems. We report here the results of three-dimensional simulations of the evolution of supernova-enriched gas within dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph's), with the aim of determining the retention efficiency of supernova ejecta. We consider two galaxy models, selected to represent opposite ends of the dSph sequence. For each model galaxy we investigate a number of scenarios, ranging from a single supernova in smooth gas distributions to more complex multiple supernovae in highly disturbed gas distributions. The results of these investigations suggest that, for low star-formation efficiencies, it is difficult to completely expel the enriched material from the galaxy. Most of the enriched gas is, however, lost from the core of the galaxy following multiple supernovae, especially if the interstellar medium is already highly disturbed by processes such as photo-ionization and stellar winds. If subsequent star formation occurs predominantly within the core where most of the residual gas is concentrated, then these results could explain the poor self-enrichment efficiency observed in dwarf galaxies.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2003

COSMOS: A Radiation-Chemo-Hydrodynamics Code for Astrophysical Problems

We have developed a new massively-parallel radiation-hydrodynamics code (Cosmos) for Newtonian and relativistic astrophysical problems that also includes radiative cooling, self-gravity, and non-equilibrium, multi-species chemistry. Several numerical methods are implemented for the hydrodynamics, including options for both internal and total energy conserving schemes. Radiation is treated using flux-limited diffusion. The chemistry incorporates 27 reactions, including both collisional and radiative processes for atomic hydrogen and helium gases, and molecular hydrogen chains. In this paper we discuss the equations and present results from test problems carried out to verify the robustness and accuracy of our code in the Newtonian regime. An earlier paper presented tests of the relativistic capabilities of Cosmos.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2003

Hydrodynamic Stability of Cosmological Quark-Hadron Phase Transitions

Recent results from linear perturbation theory suggest that first-order cosmological quark-hadron phase transitions occurring as deflagrations may be ``borderline'' unstable, and those occurring as detonations may give rise to growing modes behind the interface boundary. However, since nonlinear effects can play important roles in the development of perturbations, unstable behavior cannot be asserted entirely by linear analysis, and the uncertainty of these recent studies is compounded further by nonlinearities in the hydrodynamics and self-interaction fields. In this paper we investigate the growth of perturbations and the stability of quark-hadron phase transitions in the early Universe by solving numerically the fully nonlinear relativistic hydrodynamics equations coupled to a scalar field with a quartic self-interaction potential regulating the transitions. We consider single, perturbed, phase transitions propagating either by detonation or deflagration, as well as multiple phase and shock front interactions in 1+2 dimensional spacetimes.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2002

Non-Oscillatory Central Difference and Artificial Viscosity Schemes for Relativistic Hydrodynamics

High resolution, non-oscillatory, central difference (NOCD) numerical schemes are introduced as alternatives to more traditional artificial viscosity (AV) and Godunov methods for solving the fully general relativistic hydrodynamics equations. These new approaches provide the advantages of Godunov methods in capturing ultra-relativistic flows without the cost and complication of Riemann solvers, and the advantages of AV methods in their speed, ease of implementation, and general applicability without explicitly using artificial viscosity for shock capturing. Shock tube, wall shock, and dust accretion tests, all with adiabatic equations of state, are presented and compared against equivalent solutions from both AV and Godunov based codes. In the process we address the accuracy of time-explicit NOCD and AV methods over a wide range of Lorentz factors.

astro-ph↗