Modelling astrophysical fluids with particles

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics is a crucial tool to theoretically explore the cosmos. In the last decade, we have seen a substantial methodological diversification with a number of cross-fertilizations between originally different methods. Here we focus on recent developments related to the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method. We briefly summarize recent technical improvements in the SPH-approach itself, including smoothing kernels, gradient calculations and dissipation steering. These elements have been implemented in the Newtonian high-accuracy SPH code MAGMA2 and we demonstrate its performance in a number of challenging benchmark tests. Taking it one step further, we have used these new ingredients also in the first particle-based, general-relativistic fluid dynamics code that solves the full set of Einstein equations, SPHINCS_BSSN. We present the basic ideas and equations and demonstrate the code performance at examples of relativistic neutron stars that are evolved self-consistently together with the spacetime.