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Title: Generalized, Energy-conserving Numerical Simulations of Particles in General Relativity. II. Test Particles in Electromagnetic Fields and GRMHD

Abstract

Observations of compact objects, in the form of radiation spectra, gravitational waves by LIGO/Virgo, and direct imaging with the Event Horizon Telescope, are currently the main information sources on plasma physics in extreme gravity. Modeling such physical phenomena Requires numerical methods that allow for the simulation of microscopic plasma dynamics in the presence of both strong gravity and electromagnetic fields. In Bacchini et al. (2018), we presented a detailed study of numerical techniques for the integration of free geodesic motion. In this paper, we extend the study by introducing electromagnetic forces in the simulation of charged particles in curved spacetimes. We extend the Hamiltonian energy-conserving method presented in Bacchini et al. to include the Lorentz force, and we test its performance compared to that of standard explicit Runge–Kutta and implicit midpoint rule schemes against analytic solutions. Then, we show the application of the numerical schemes to the integration of test particle trajectories in general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations by modifying the algorithms to handle grid-based electromagnetic fields. We test this approach by simulating ensembles of charged particles in a static GRMHD configuration obtained with the black hole accretion code (BHAC).

Authors:
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [3];  [4]
  1. Katholieke Univ. (KU) Leuven (Belgium)
  2. Katholieke Univ. (KU) Leuven (Belgium); Goethe Univ., Frankfurt (Germany)
  3. Goethe Univ., Frankfurt (Germany); Univ. of Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
  4. Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Columbia Univ., New York, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO); European Research Council (ERC); National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); National Science Foundation (NSF); Research Foundation Flanders (FWO); Flemish Government
OSTI Identifier:
1612632
Grant/Contract Number:  
SC0016542
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
The Astrophysical Journal. Supplement Series (Online)
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: The Astrophysical Journal. Supplement Series (Online); Journal Volume: 240; Journal Issue: 2; Journal ID: ISSN 1538-4365
Publisher:
American Astronomical Society/IOP
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS; astronomy & astrophysics; acceleration of particles; gravitation; methods: numerical; relativistic processes; stars: black holes

Citation Formats

Bacchini, F., Ripperda, B., Porth, O., and Sironi, L. Generalized, Energy-conserving Numerical Simulations of Particles in General Relativity. II. Test Particles in Electromagnetic Fields and GRMHD. United States: N. p., 2019. Web. doi:10.3847/1538-4365/aafcb3.
Bacchini, F., Ripperda, B., Porth, O., & Sironi, L. Generalized, Energy-conserving Numerical Simulations of Particles in General Relativity. II. Test Particles in Electromagnetic Fields and GRMHD. United States. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/aafcb3
Bacchini, F., Ripperda, B., Porth, O., and Sironi, L. Fri . "Generalized, Energy-conserving Numerical Simulations of Particles in General Relativity. II. Test Particles in Electromagnetic Fields and GRMHD". United States. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/aafcb3. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1612632.
@article{osti_1612632,
title = {Generalized, Energy-conserving Numerical Simulations of Particles in General Relativity. II. Test Particles in Electromagnetic Fields and GRMHD},
author = {Bacchini, F. and Ripperda, B. and Porth, O. and Sironi, L.},
abstractNote = {Observations of compact objects, in the form of radiation spectra, gravitational waves by LIGO/Virgo, and direct imaging with the Event Horizon Telescope, are currently the main information sources on plasma physics in extreme gravity. Modeling such physical phenomena Requires numerical methods that allow for the simulation of microscopic plasma dynamics in the presence of both strong gravity and electromagnetic fields. In Bacchini et al. (2018), we presented a detailed study of numerical techniques for the integration of free geodesic motion. In this paper, we extend the study by introducing electromagnetic forces in the simulation of charged particles in curved spacetimes. We extend the Hamiltonian energy-conserving method presented in Bacchini et al. to include the Lorentz force, and we test its performance compared to that of standard explicit Runge–Kutta and implicit midpoint rule schemes against analytic solutions. Then, we show the application of the numerical schemes to the integration of test particle trajectories in general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations by modifying the algorithms to handle grid-based electromagnetic fields. We test this approach by simulating ensembles of charged particles in a static GRMHD configuration obtained with the black hole accretion code (BHAC).},
doi = {10.3847/1538-4365/aafcb3},
journal = {The Astrophysical Journal. Supplement Series (Online)},
number = 2,
volume = 240,
place = {United States},
year = {Fri Feb 15 00:00:00 EST 2019},
month = {Fri Feb 15 00:00:00 EST 2019}
}

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Cited by: 19 works
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journal, July 2018

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The Radiative Efficiency and Spectra of Slowly Accreting Black Holes from Two-temperature GRRMHD Simulations
journal, July 2017

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text, January 2008


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text, January 2010


Synchrotron radiation of self-collimating relativistic MHD jets
text, January 2011


Charged particle motion in Kerr-Newmann space-times
text, January 2013


Energy conserving schemes for the simulation of musical instrument contact dynamics
text, January 2015


IllinoisGRMHD: An Open-Source, User-Friendly GRMHD Code for Dynamical Spacetimes
text, January 2015


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rHARM: Accretion and Ejection in Resistive GR-MHD
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A comprehensive comparison of relativistic particle integrators
text, January 2017


Works referencing / citing this record:

General-relativistic Resistive Magnetohydrodynamics with Robust Primitive-variable Recovery for Accretion Disk Simulations
journal, September 2019

  • Ripperda, B.; Bacchini, F.; Porth, O.
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Very-high-energy Emission from Magnetic Reconnection in the Radiative-inefficient Accretion Flow of SgrA*
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The Event Horizon General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamic Code Comparison Project
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A Novel Energy-conserving Scheme for Eight-dimensional Hamiltonian Problems
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