Related papers: Radioactive Heating and Late Time Kilonova Light C…
Recent detection of gravitational waves from a neutron star (NS) merger event GW170817 and identification of an electromagnetic counterpart provide a unique opportunity to study the physical processes in NS mergers. To derive properties of…
Depending upon the properties of their compact remnants and the physics included in the models, simulations of neutron star mergers can produce a broad range of ejecta properties. The characteristics of this ejecta, in turn, define the…
Kilonovae are the electromagnetic transients created by the radioactive decay of freshly synthesized elements in the environment surrounding a neutron star merger. To study the fundamental physics in these complex environments, kilonova…
The coalescence of binary neutron stars can yield the expulsion of a fast-moving, quasi-isotropic material, which may induce thermal radiation and give rise to kilonova emission. Moreover, the interaction between the ejected material and…
Neutron star mergers are cosmic catastrophes that produce some of the most energetic observed phenomena: short gamma-ray bursts, gravitational wave signals, and kilonovae. The latter are optical transients, powered by radioactive nuclides…
A kilonova, the electromagnetic emission produced by compact binary mergers, is formed through a delicate interplay of physical processes, involving r-process nucleosynthesis and interactions between heavy elements and photons through…
We present three-dimensional radiative transfer calculations for the ejecta from a neutron star merger that include line-by-line opacities for tens of millions of bound-bound transitions, composition from an r-process nuclear network, and…
Simplified analytic methods are frequently used to model the light curves of supernovae and other energetic transients and to extract physical quantities, such as the ejecta mass and amount of radioactive heating. The applicability and…
Kilonovae are a novel class of astrophysical transients, and the only observationally-confirmed site of rapid neutron capture nucleosynthesis (the r-process) in the Universe. To date, only a handful of kilonovae have been detected, with…
The rapid neutron capture process (r-process) is one of the main mechanisms whereby elements heavier than iron are synthesized, and is entirely responsible for the natural production of the actinides. Kilonova emissions are modeled as being…
As LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA enters its fourth observing run, a new opportunity to search for electromagnetic counterparts of compact object mergers will also begin. The light curves and spectra from the first "kilonova" associated with a binary…
Kilonovae are optical transients following the merger of neutron star binaries, which are powered by the r-process heating of merger ejecta. However, if a merger remnant is a long-lived supramassive neutron star supported by its uniform…
We develop a method to compute synthetic kilonova light curves that combines numerical relativity simulations of neutron star mergers and the $\texttt{SNEC}$ radiation-hydrodynamics code. We describe our implementation of initial and…
A macronova (kilonova) was discovered with a short gamma-ray burst, GRB 130603B, which is widely believed to be powered by the radioactivity of $r$-process elements synthesized in the ejecta of a neutron star binary merger. As an…
The discovery of the optical counterpart, along with the gravitational waves from GW170817, of the first binary neutron star merger, opened up a new era for multi-messenger astrophysics. Combining the GW data with the optical counterpart,…
Ionization by radioactive decay products including $\alpha$-particles, $\beta$-decay electrons, and fission fragments plays a central role in determining the nebular-phase ionization state and spectra of kilonovae. In this work, ionization…
Kilonovae (KNe) are one of the fastest types of optical transients known, cooling rapidly in the first few days following their neutron-star merger origin. We show here that KN spectral features go through rapid recombination transitions,…
The ejecta from binary neutron star mergers, which powers its associated kilonova, can inform us about source properties, merger dynamics, and the dense nuclear matter equation of state. While now in the era of multi-messenger astronomy, we…
The merger of neutron star binaries is believed to eject a wide range of heavy elements into the universe. By observing the emission from this ejecta, scientists can probe the ejecta properties (mass, velocity and composition…
The electromagnetic emission resulting from neutron star mergers have been shown to encode properties of the ejected material in their light curves. The ejecta properties inferred from the kilonova emission has been in tension with those…