Collaborative Research: Predicting the Transient Signals from Galactic Centers: Circumbinary Disks and Tidal Disruptions around Black Holes

合作研究：预测来自银河系中心的瞬态信号：环形盘和黑洞周围的潮汐扰动

• 批准号: 1516125
• 负责人: Manuela Campanelli
• 金额: $ 1.22万
• 依托单位: Rochester Institute of Tech
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2018-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1516125&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Predicting; Transient; Signals

With masses millions to billions times that of our Sun, the strong gravitational influence of supermassive black holes can heat nearby gas so that it outshines an entire galaxy of stars, and slingshot material outward at relativistic speeds. They exist at the centers of almost every massive galaxy, and they may play a significant role in regulating rates of star formation. Our project aims to produce the most realistic simulations to-date of two of the most dramatic events they can make: the inspiral and merger of two orbiting supermassive black holes and the tidal disruption of stars. Both were once thought to be unobservable, but the advent of very large astronomical surveys sensitive to transients have led to the discovery of numerous tidal disruptions and promise the discovery of many mergers. The prospect of extensive observational data make both very hot topics. The great advantage of this program is the opportunity it provides to integrate many existing research programs into a larger community of scientists, students, and the general public. It will foster crossdisciplinary collaborations among undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and faculty at the Univ. of Tulsa, Johns Hopkins Univ., NASA/GSFC, and Rochester Institute of Technology. Through such a network, our previous highly successful outreach programs will be able to reach an even larger and more diverse audience. For instance, S. Noble (PI) will continue to speak about hot physics topics with the 100-200 high school students that attend the monthly ?Journal Club? event sponsored by his department, and will work with his collaborators on building similar activities at their institutions.The major goal of this project is to make specific predictions of electromagnetic signatures of circumbinary accretion and tidal disruption events that will allow astronomers to identify, based solely on EM observations, these spectacular events using HST (optical), JWST (IR), Chandra (X-ray), and ISS-Lobster (X-ray), as well as ground based instrumentation such as the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, which is already in operation, or the planned Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. Such identifications will be a tremendous aid in refining our estimates of the population of merging supermassive black holes, both for estimating the numbers of potential gravitational wave targets and for evaluating the impact of black hole mergers on galaxy evolution. Our simulations on Blue Waters will employ a number of new computational developments needed to achieve the most realistic simulations of these systems to date. They include an adaptive load balancer to evenly distribute runs with nonuniform costs, and a multi-patch system for evolving the magnetohydrodynamics equations on different coordinate domains. It is our intent to make the latter tool publicly available for use in other magnetohydrodynamics codes. Our scientific results will also have a wide-reaching impact on the astrophysical community, both theoretically and observationally. We will release detailed spectra and simulation data for use by observers and future mission development teams. This work comes at a particularly opportune time, as the fields of time-domain and multi-messenger astronomy are growing rapidly.

拥有数百万到数十亿到我们太阳的数十亿倍，超级质量黑洞的强力影响可以在附近加热，从而使其超过整个星系，并以相对论速度向外向外弹弓材料。它们几乎存在于几乎每个大型星系的中心，它们可能在调节恒星形成率中发挥重要作用。我们的项目旨在在他们可以做出的两个最戏剧性的事件中生成最现实的模拟：两个旋转的超级质量黑洞的灵感和合并以及恒星的潮汐破坏。两者曾经被认为是不可观察的，但是对瞬态敏感的非常大的天文学调查的出现导致发现了许多潮汐破坏，并保证发现许多合并。广泛的观察数据的前景既是非常热门的话题。该计划的最大优势是将许多现有的研究计划整合到更大的科学家，学生和公众的社区中。它将促进大学生，研究生，博士后研究人员和大学教师的跨学科合作。塔尔萨（Tulsa），约翰·霍普金斯大学（Johns Hopkins Univ。通过这样的网络，我们以前非常成功的外展计划将能够吸引更大，更多样化的受众。例如，S。Noble（PI）将继续与100-200名高中学生一起参加“每月？期刊俱乐部”，谈论热门物理主题？由他的部门赞助的活动，并将与他的合作者合作在其机构上构建类似的活动。该项目的主要目标是对电磁磁场和潮汐破坏事件的电磁签名进行具体预测（X射线）以及基于地面的仪器，例如已经在运行的全景调查望远镜和快速响应系统，或计划的大型Synoptic Sumpertic Survey望远镜。这种识别将是完善我们对合并超质量黑洞人群的估计值的巨大帮助，既可以估计潜在的引力波目标的数量，又用于评估黑洞合并对银河系进化的影响。我们对蓝色水域的模拟将采用许多新的计算发展，以实现迄今为止这些系统的最现实模拟。它们包括一个自适应负载平衡器，以均匀分配成本不均匀的跑步，以及用于在不同坐标域上进化磁性水力动力学方程的多块系统。我们的目的是使后一种工具公开用于其他磁水动力学代码。我们的科学结果也将对天体物理界（理论上和观察）产生广泛的影响。我们将发布详细的光谱和仿真数据，以供观察者和未来的任务开发团队使用。这项工作在一个特别合适的时刻出现，因为时间域和多门徒天文学的领域正在迅速增长。