This award provides travel funds to support technical coordination between the Blue Waters project team and a team of astrophysical researchers to explore the readiness of an astrophysics code for use on the Blue Waters system. If successful, it is anticipated that the code will be used to continue the research programs of the collaborators who are using codes in the Cactus framework to study (a) the dynamics of the collapse of a massive star and (b) the mergers of a pair of neutron stars and of a neutron star and black hole. The proposal hypothesizes that the former is a possible explanation of long-wave gamma-ray bursts and the latter may give rise to short-wave gamma-ray bursts. Planned work preparing the numerical simulation tool involves work on improving the physics of the astrophysics code and includes adding neutrino transport and interactions, radiation transport, the capability to handle ultra-relativistic flows, gamma-ray emission from relativistic plasmas, and afterglow photon emission.
The project team contains a number of relatively recent Ph.D.s. It plans to make the codes developed publicly available. One post-doctoral researcher will be involved in the interaction between the project team and the Blue Waters team. At least one member of the project team is from an under-represented group.
