Princeton University Gravity Initiative Seminar Series

Abstract: We present an extensive study of the effects of neutrino transport in 3-dimensional general relativistic radiation hydrodynamics (GRHD) simulations of binary neutron star (BNS) mergers using our moment-based, energy-integrated  neutrino radiation  transport (M1) scheme. We consider a total of 8 BNS configurations, while varying the equation of state models, mass ratios and grid resolutions, for a total of 16 simulations. We find that M1 neutrino transport is crucial in modeling the local absorption of neutrinos and the deposition of lepton number throughout the medium. We provide an in-depth look at the effects of  neutrinos on the fluid dynamics and luminosity during the late inspiral and post-merger phases, the properties of ejecta and outflow, the post-merger nucleosynthesis, out-of-equilibrium dynamics, and the potential  impact of neutrino absorption on mitigating bulk viscosity in the post-merger phase.