Impact of moment-based, energy integrated neutrino transport on microphysics and ejecta in binary neutron star mergers

Pedro Luis Espino, David Radice, Francesco Zappa, Rossella Gamba, Sebastiano Bernuzzi.
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Abstract

We present an extensive study of the effects of neutrino transport in 3-dimensional general relativistic radiation hydrodynamics (GRHD) simulations of binary neutron star (BNS) mergers using our moment-based, energy-integrated neutrino radiation transport (M1) scheme. We consider a total of 8 BNS configurations, while varying equation of state models, mass ratios and grid resolutions, for a total of 16 simulations. We find that M1 neutrino transport is crucial in modeling the local absorption of neutrinos and the deposition of lepton number throughout the medium. We provide an in-depth look at the effects of neutrinos on the fluid dynamics and luminosity during the late inspiral and post-merger phases, the properties of ejecta and outflow, and the post-merger nucleosynthesis. The simulations presented in this work comprise an extensive study of the combined effect of the equation of state and M1 neutrino transport in GRHD simulations of BNS mergers, and establish that the solution provided by our M1 scheme is robust across system properties and provides insight into the effects of neutrino trapping in BNS mergers.

Associated Fellows