P. Tzeferacos

THE POST-MERGER MAGNETIZED EVOLUTION OF WHITE DWARF BINARIES: THE DOUBLE-DEGENERATE CHANNEL OF SUB-CHANDRASEKHAR TYPE Ia SUPERNOVAE AND THE FORMATION OF MAGNETIZED WHITE DWARFS

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) play a crucial role as standardizable cosmological candles, though the nature of their progenitors is a subject of active investigation. Recent observational and theoretical work has pointed to merging white dwarf binaries, referred to as the double-degenerate channel, as the possible progenitor systems for some SNe Ia. Additionally, recent theoretical work suggests that mergers which fail to detonate may produce magnetized, rapidly rotating white dwarfs. In this paper, we present the first multidimensional simulations of the post-merger evolution of white dwarf binaries to include the effect of the magnetic field. In these systems, the two white dwarfs complete a final merger on a dynamical timescale, and are tidally disrupted, producing a rapidly rotating white dwarf merger surrounded by a hot corona and a thick, differentially rotating disk. The disk is strongly susceptible to the magnetorotational instability (MRI), and we demonstrate that this leads to the rapid growth of an initially dynamically weak magnetic field in the disk, the spin-down of the white dwarf merger, and to the subsequent central ignition of the white dwarf merger. Additionally, these magnetized models exhibit new features not present in prior hydrodynamic studies of white dwarf mergers, including the development of MRI turbulence in the hot disk, magnetized outflows carrying a significant fraction of the disk mass, and the magnetization of the white dwarf merger to field strengths ~2 × 108 G. We discuss the impact of our findings on the origins, circumstellar media, and observed properties of SNe Ia and magnetized white dwarfs.

Developed turbulence and nonlinear amplification of magnetic fields in laboratory and astrophysical plasmas

Significance Magnetic fields exist throughout the universe. Their energy density is comparable to the energy density of the fluid motions of the plasma in which they are embedded, making magnetic fields essential players in the dynamics of the luminous matter in the universe. The origin and the amplification of these magnetic fields to their observed strengths are far from being understood. The standard model for the origin of these galactic and intergalactic magnetic fields is through the amplification of seed fields via turbulent processes to the level consistent with current observations. For this process to be effective, the amplification needs to reach a strongly nonlinear phase. Experimental evidence of the initial nonlinear amplification of magnetic fields is presented in this paper. The visible matter in the universe is turbulent and magnetized. Turbulence in galaxy clusters is produced by mergers and by jets of the central galaxies and believed responsible for the amplification of magnetic fields. We report on experiments looking at the collision of two laser-produced plasma clouds, mimicking, in the laboratory, a cluster merger event. By measuring the spectrum of the density fluctuations, we infer developed, Kolmogorov-like turbulence. From spectral line broadening, we estimate a level of turbulence consistent with turbulent heating balancing radiative cooling, as it likely does in galaxy clusters. We show that the magnetic field is amplified by turbulent motions, reaching a nonlinear regime that is a precursor to turbulent dynamo. Thus, our experiment provides a promising platform for understanding the structure of turbulence and the amplification of magnetic fields in the universe.

Collisionless shock experiments with lasers and observation of Weibel instabilities

Astrophysical collisionless shocks are common in the universe, occurring in supernova remnants, gamma ray bursts, and protostellar jets. They appear in colliding plasma flows when the mean free path for ion-ion collisions is much larger than the system size. It is believed that such shocks could be mediated via the electromagnetic Weibel instability in astrophysical environments without pre-existing magnetic fields. Here, we present laboratory experiments using high-power lasers and investigate the dynamics of high-Mach-number collisionless shock formation in two interpenetrating plasma streams. Our recent proton-probe experiments on Omega show the characteristic filamentary structures of the Weibel instability that are electromagnetic in nature with an inferred magnetization level as high as ∼1% [C. M. Huntington et al., “Observation of magnetic field generation via the weibel instability in interpenetrating plasma flows,” Nat. Phys. 11, 173–176 (2015)]. These results imply that electromagnetic instabilities are significant in the interaction of astrophysical conditions.

Numerical modeling of laser-driven experiments aiming to demonstrate magnetic field amplification via turbulent dynamo

The universe is permeated by magnetic fields, with strengths ranging from a femtogauss in the voids between the filaments of galaxy clusters to several teragauss in black holes and neutron stars. The standard model behind cosmological magnetic fields is the nonlinear amplification of seed fields via turbulent dynamo to the values observed. We have conceived experiments that aim to demonstrate and study the turbulent dynamo mechanism in the laboratory. Here, we describe the design of these experiments through simulation campaigns using FLASH, a highly capable radiation magnetohydrodynamics code that we have developed, and large-scale three-dimensional simulations on the Mira supercomputer at the Argonne National Laboratory. The simulation results indicate that the experimental platform may be capable of reaching a turbulent plasma state and determining the dynamo amplification. We validate and compare our numerical results with a small subset of experimental data using synthetic diagnostics.

Software Abstractions and Methodologies for HPC Simulation Codes on Future Architectures

Simulations with multi-physics modeling have become crucial to many science and engineering fields, and multi-physics capable scientific software is as important to these fields as instruments and facilities are to experimental sciences. The current generation of mature multi-physics codes would have sustainably served their target communities with modest amount of ongoing investment for enhancing capabilities. However, the revolution occurring in the hardware architecture has made it necessary to tackle the parallelism and performance management in these codes at multiple levels. The requirements of various levels are often at cross-purposes with one another, and therefore hugely complicate the software design. All of these considerations make it essential to approach this challenge cooperatively as a community. We conducted a series of workshops under an NSF-SI2 conceptualization grant to get input from various stakeholders, and to identify broad approaches that might lead to a solution. In this position paper we detail the major concerns articulated by the application code developers, and emerging trends in utilization of programming abstractions that we found through these workshops.

Scaled laboratory experiments explain the kink behaviour of the Crab Nebula jet.

The remarkable discovery by the Chandra X-ray observatory that the Crab nebulas jet periodically changes direction provides a challenge to our understanding of astrophysical jet dynamics. It has been suggested that this phenomenon may be the consequence of magnetic fields and magnetohydrodynamic instabilities, but experimental demonstration in a controlled laboratory environment has remained elusive. Here we report experiments that use high-power lasers to create a plasma jet that can be directly compared with the Crab jet through well-defined physical scaling laws. The jet generates its own embedded toroidal magnetic fields; as it moves, plasma instabilities result in multiple deflections of the propagation direction, mimicking the kink behaviour of the Crab jet. The experiment is modelled with three-dimensional numerical simulations that show exactly how the instability develops and results in changes of direction of the jet.

A wind-driving disc model for the mm-wavelength polarization structure of HL Tau

The recent advent of spatially resolved mm- and cm-wavelength polarimetry in protostellar accretion discs could help clarify the role of magnetic fields in the angular momentum transport in these systems. The best case to date is that of HL~Tau, where the inability to produce a good fit to the 1.25-mm data with a combination of vertical and azimuthal magnetic field components was interpreted as implying that centrifugally driven winds (CDWs) are probably not a significant transport mechanism on the

Interaction of a highly radiative shock with a solid obstacle

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Creation of magnetized jet using a ring of laser beams

au scale probed by the observations. Using synthetic polarization maps of heuristic single-field-component discs and of a post-processed simulation of a wind-driving disc, we demonstrate that a much better fit to the data can be obtained if the radial field component, a hallmark of the CDW mechanism, dominates in the polarized emission region. A similar inference was previously made in modelling the far-infrared polarization map of the pc-scale dust ring in the Galactic centre. To reconcile this interpretation with theoretical models of protostellar discs, which indicate that the wind is launched from a comparatively high elevation above the mid-plane, we propose that most of the polarized emission originates -- with a high (

Inferring morphology and strength of magnetic fields from proton radiographs

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