Crashing Neutron Stars on the Italian Dolomites

Bruno Giacomazzo, Andrea Endrizzi, Riccardo Ciolfi, Wolfgang Kastaun share details of their latest research published in the CQG focus issue: Rattle and shine: the signals from compact binary mergers.

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From left to right: Bruno Giacomazzo, Andrea Endrizzi, Riccardo Ciolfi, Wolfgang Kastaun.
About the authors: Bruno Giacomazzo is an assistant professor at the Department of Physics of the University of Trento and the Principal Investigator of the numerical relativity group there. The group is currently composed of two postdocs (Riccardo Ciolfi and Wolfgang Kastaun) and two PhD students (Andrea Endrizzi and Takumu Kawamura).

At the end of 2013, after seven years spent abroad (between Germany and the USA),  Bruno Giacomazzo came back to Italy for an assistant professor position at the University of Trento in Northern Italy. He used to come to this region when he was a kid to hike or ski on the mountains, but he never thought he would have come back here to study neutron star mergers.

Thanks to financial support from MIUR (Ministry of Education, University, and Research) he was able to attract Riccardo Ciolfi and Wolfgang Kastaun from abroad and to create with them the first numerical relativity group in this part of Italy. Thanks to

And now for something completely different…

Nils Andersson is Head of the Southampton University Gravity group. He is mainly focussed on problems involving the modelling of neutron stars and understanding various related astrophysical phenomena, from pulsar glitches to magnetar giant flares. Away from the office, he writes science-inspired books for kids and occasionally blows his own trumpet in public.

Each and every trade has its favourite tools, some more powerful than others. A plumber would not get by without a good wrench, a carpenter needs a hammer, a mechanic a screwdriver and so on. Theoretical physicists prefer action principles.

This preference is natural given that many of the phenomena we are interested in are associated with deviations from some minimum energy equilibrium state. It is well known that, once you understand a problem from the variational point-of-view, you have a very powerful tool at your hands. However, it is also generally accepted that this approach is restricted to conservative systems.

Our recent paper in Classical and Quantum Gravity challenges this consensus view. Working in the framework of classical general relativity (no extra dimensions and fancy stuff here!), we develop

High-order fully general-relativistic hydrodynamics: new approaches and tests

Pablo Laguna is the Chair of the School of Physics at Georgia Tech

As we approach the era of gravitational-wave astrophysics driven by observations, it is imperative to have general-relativistic hydrodynamic codes capable of revealing in exquisite detail phenomena driven by strong dynamical gravity.

In this paper, Radice, Rezzolla and Galeazzi introduce a new approach to build a code, called WhiskyTHC, with the potential to help deliver that. The new approach borrows elements from the Whisky and Template Hydrodynamics codes. The Whisky code is widely used by the numerical relativity community, and the

General-relativistic hydrodynamics: going beyond second-order convergence

High accuracy in numerical relativity simulations is essential: now it can also be achieved for non-vacuum spacetimes.

Merging binary neutron stars are among the most promising sources of gravitational waves (GWs) for the next generation of interferometric detectors. Such waves carry valuable information about the masses, radii, and deformability of the two stars. Even a single detection would set stringent constraints on the equation of state of nuclear matter, which is still poorly known. Gravitational-wave observations, in combination with electromagnetic/neutrino counterparts, would also help to unravel the mystery behind gamma-ray bursts.