Speaker: Sherwood Richers
Speaker's Institution: Caltech
Seminar Title: Monte Carlo Neutrino Transport in Supernovae and GRBs
Neutrino interactions dominate the energetics of core-collapse supernovae (CCSNe) and
determine the composition of the matter ejected from CCSNe and gamma-ray bursts (GRBs).
Three dimensional (3D) CCSN and neutron star merger simulations are rapidly improving, but
still suffer from approximate treatments of neutrino transport that cripple their reliability and
realism. I use my relativistic time-independent Monte Carlo neutrino transport code SEDONU to
evaluate the effectiveness of leakage, moment, and discrete ordinate schemes in both of these
scenarios, and calculate neutrino pair annihilation rates to try to explain the jet launching
mechanism of GRBs. I also developed a relativistic extension to the Random Walk
approximation that greatly accelerates convergence in diffusive regimes, making full-domain
simulations possible. All of these improvements will culminate in a coupled Monte Carlo - two
moment transport scheme efficient enough to incorporate into the to-date most accurate global
three-dimensional GRMHD simulations.

Location:	Room 1400 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building [map]
Price:	free
Sponsor:	Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building
Contact:	Shawna Prater prater@pa.msu.edu
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