Engineering topics

McCourt, Michael

Publications and source records attributed to McCourt, Michael.

4 records

DOE OSTI2017

Simulations of Magnetic Fields in Tidally Disrupted Stars

We perform the first magnetohydrodynamical simulations of tidal disruptions of stars by supermassive black holes. We consider stars with both tangled and ordered magnetic fields, for both grazing and deeply disruptive encounters. When the star survives disruption, we find its magnetic field amplifies by a factor of up to 20, but see no evidence for a self-sustaining dynamo that would yield arbitrary field growth. For stars that do not survive, and within the tidal debris streams produced in partial disruptions, we find that the component of the magnetic field parallel to the direction of stretching along the debris stream only decreases slightly with time, eventually resulting in a stream where the magnetic pressure is in equipartition with the gas. Our results suggest that the returning gas in most (if not all) stellar tidal disruptions is already highly magnetized by the time it returns to the black hole.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2016

From mirrors to windows: Lyman-alpha radiative transfer in a very clumpy medium

Lyman-alpha (Lyα) is the strongest emission line in the universe and is frequently used to detect and study the most distant galaxies. Because Lyα is a resonant line, photons typically scatter prior to escaping; this scattering process complicates the interpretation of Lyα spectra, but also encodes a wealth of information about the structure and kinematics of neutral gas in the Galaxy. Modeling the Lyα line therefore allows us to study tiny-scale features of the gas. Curiously, observed Lyα spectra can be modeled successfully with very simple, homogeneous geometries (such as an expanding, spherical shell), whereas more realistic, multiphase geometries often fail to reproduce the observed spectra. This seems paradoxical since the gas in galaxies is known to be multiphase. In this Letter, we show that spectra emerging from clumpy geometries with a large number (≳10 for a clump column density of N{sub HI,cl}∼10{sup 17} cm{sup −2}) of clouds along the line of sight converge to the predictions from simplified, homogeneous models. We suggest that this resolves the apparent discrepancy and may provide a way to study the gas structure in galaxies on scales far smaller than can be probed in either cosmological simulations or direct (i.e., spatially resolved) observations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2016

UNBOUND DEBRIS STREAMS AND REMNANTS RESULTING FROM THE TIDAL DISRUPTIONS OF STARS BY SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES

The kinetic energy of a star in orbit about a supermassive black hole is a significant fraction of its rest mass energy when its periapse is comparable to its tidal radius. Upon its destruction, a fraction of this energy is extracted and injected into the stellar debris, half of which becomes unbound from the black hole, with the fastest material moving at ∼0.03c. In this paper, we present a formalism for determining the fate of these unbound debris streams (UDSs) as they depart from the black hole and interact with the surrounding gas. As the density and velocity varies along the length of a UDS, we find that hydrodynamical drag quickly shapes UDSs into loop-like structures, with the densest portions of the streams leading portions of lower density. As UDSs travel outwards, their drag against the ISM increases quadratically with distance, which causes UDSs to deposit their momentum and energy into the ambient medium before the surrounding shocked ISM has a chance to cool. This sudden injection of ∼10{sup 50} erg into the ambient medium generates a Sedov-like unbound debris remnant (UDR) that mimics supernova remnants (SNRs) in energetics and appearance, accelerates particles which will produce cosmic rays and synchrotron emission, and provides momentum feedback into the molecular clouds surrounding a black hole. We estimate that a few of these UDRs might be present within a couple degrees of the Galactic Center masquerading as SNRs, and that the UDR scenario is a plausible explanation for Sgr A east.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2013

Multiphysics Simulations: Challenges and Opportunities

We consider multiphysics applications from algorithmic and architectural perspectives, where ‘‘algorithmic’’ includes both mathematical analysis and computational complexity, and ‘‘architectural’’ includes both software and hardware environments. Many diverse multiphysics applications can be reduced, en route to their computational simulation, to a common algebraic coupling paradigm. Mathematical analysis of multiphysics coupling in this form is not always practical for realistic applications, but model problems representative of applications discussed herein can provide insight. A variety of software frameworks for multiphysics applications have been constructed and refined within disciplinary communities and executed on leading-edge computer systems. We examine several of these, expose some commonalities among them, and attempt to extrapolate best practices to future systems. From our study, we summarize challenges and forecast opportunities.

Keyes, David↗