What High Fidelity Supercomputer Simulations Can Teach Us About Matter at the Highest Densities and the Origin of Heavy Elements

by Jonah Miller (Los Alamos National Lab)

Tuesday 20 May 2025, 13:15 → 14:15 Europe/Stockholm

FB54 (AlbaNova Main Building)

The 2017 detection of the in-spiral and merger of two neutron stars was a landmark discovery in astrophysics. Through a wealth of multi-messenger data, we now know that the merger of these ultracompact stellar remnants is a central engine of short gamma ray bursts and a site of r-process nucleosynthesis, where the heaviest elements in our universe are formed. The radioactive decay of unstable heavy elements produced in such mergers powers an optical and infra-red transient: The kilonova. 

Along with core-collapse supernovae, neutron star mergers offer insight into the behavior of matter at incredibly high densities and temperatures. While pairwise interactions in this regime are well understood, collective behavior is not. This is the so-called high-temperature nuclear equation of state, and it is a grand challenge problem in nuclear physics. 

In this talk, I present my research program of nuclear astrophysics, where I use high-fidelity supercomputer simulations to investigate both the origin of heavy elements and the nuclear equation of state in core collapse supernovae, neutron star mergers, and their aftermath. I will discuss exciting results in this area, as well as recent progress on new modeling capabilities that leverage GPU computing.