Roland Haas, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
Mergers of neutron star — neutron star binaries are among the most spectacular events in the universe, emitting electromagnetic,
neutrino an gravitational wave radiation as two 1.4 solar mass star collide and eventually collapse to a black hole. LIGO is sensitive to such mergers to 100 Mpc and a detection with sufficiently high signal to noise ratio will allow us to measure properties of neutron stars in a way independent of the emission model and constrain parameters of the neutron star equation of state. Similarly the intense neutrino flux during merger makes these events candidates for r-process nucleosynthesis, making them sites for the production of heavy elements in our Universe. Finally an coincident electromagnetic observation may well establish for fact the conjecture that neutron star — neutron star mergers are progenitors of short gamma ray bursts. I present an update neutron star simulations using the SXS’s collaborations SpEC code as well as an update on activities at NCSA connected to LIGO.