Event
SHARCNET sponsored Scientific Computing Seminar (Dr. Robyn Levine)
February 12, 2010
1:00 pm - 2:00pm
Location: UA4170
Speaker: Dr. Robyn Levine, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Toronto
Title: The Challenging Task to Simulate the Growth of Supermassive Black Holes and Galaxies
Abstract: Numerical simulations are a useful tool in astrophysics, where direct experimentation on celestial objects is not possible. There is evidence that many galaxies host massive black holes in the centers weighing as much as a billion times the mass of our Sun. What's more, the masses of these black holes are correlated with several observed properties of the galaxies that host them, on scales far outside the sphere of influence of the black hole. These observations suggest that black holes play an important role in the evolution of their host galaxies, and vice versa. Several recent simulations have taken on the arduous task of simulating the co-evolution of these objects, but the dynamical range and the complex array of relevant physics involved in describing galaxies and their central black holes together presents a substantial numerical challenge. I will discuss some of the physical problems to be solved, and some of the tools that are being used to solve them.
