Astroplasmas Seminar

Fridays at 12:30pm, Dome Room, Peyton Hall

Next seminar

Friday, December 10th 2021, 12.30pm

Modeling dissipative effects in general-relativistic plasmas and beyond

Elias Most (Institute of Advanced Studies and Princeton University)

Abstract: Relativistic plasmas are central to the study of black hole accretion, jet physics, neutron star mergers, and compact object magnetospheres. Going beyond common approaches used in the literature, I will describe a fully relativistic covariant 14-moment based two-fluid system appropriate for the study of electron-ion or electron-positron plasmas. This generalized Israel-Stewart-like system of equations of motion is obtained directly from the relativistic Boltzmann-Vlasov equation. Crucially, this new formulation can account for non-ideal effects, such as anisotropic pressures and heat fluxes. Specializing to the case of non-resistive plasmas, I will present a novel numerical scheme capable of solving these equations in the strongly and weakly collisional limits.

Bridging the gap between formulations of general-relativistic plasmas and dynamical gravity, I will then present a novel reformulation of the Einstein field equations. By exploiting the Palatini formalism, I will show how these equations can be recast into a form resembling non-linear electrodynamics in a medium. Such a formulation might permit the use of advanced numerical methods, such as constraint transport, in simulations of vacuum spacetimes.

Scheduled seminars (September to December 2021)

24 Sept: Jens Mahlmann (Princeton University)

01 Oct: Bart Ripperda (Center for Computational Astrophysics and Princeton University)

08 Oct: David Hosking (Oxford University)

15 Oct: Ben Prather (University of Illinois)

22 Oct: Tamar Faran (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Luciano Combi (Instituto Argentino de RadioastronomĂ­a)

29 Oct: Aaron Tran (Columbia University) and Itai Linial (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

05 Nov: Lorenzo Perrone (Cambridge University)

19 Nov: Fabio Bacchini (University of Colorado)

03 Dec: Elizabeth Tolman (Institute of Advanced Studies)

10 Dec: Elias Most (Institute of Advanced Studies and Princeton University)