Spotlight

Curran Muhlberger

Curran Muhlberger is a graduate student working in professor Saul
Teukolsky’s research group, “Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes.” The group is a collaboration between Caltech and Cornell with the goal of using supercomputers to study the relativistic physics of black holes and neutron stars. Curran has written software to generate initial data for systems of binary neutron stars by solving both Einstein’s constraint equations and the relativistic hydrodynamics equations under the assumption of circular orbits. In addition to seeding future simulations of merging neutron stars, these “quasi-equilibrium sequences” provide their own insight into the inspiral of compact astrophysical objects.

In the near future, simulations such as these will aid the data analysis
for gravitational wave detectors like LIGO and LISA, opening up a whole new observational window on our universe. Looking at neutron stars in particular, however, allows scientists to probe physics at the smallest scales as well. By constructing stars using a variety of equations of state, Curran and his collaborators hope to help reveal the behavior of nuclear matter at extreme densities inaccessible by any laboratory on Earth.