Toni Peter

Toni Peter  (Germany)

toni.peter @ uni-heidelberg.de

Development and Optimization of radiative magneto-hydrodynamical methods in numerical Astrophysics

In the last decades, our understanding of the early universe has been advanced by simulations of structure and galaxy formation. These simulations model both dark and ordinary matter over a large range of spatial and temporal scales. Particularly challenging is the modelling of ordinary matter which is affected by a large number of different physical processes. This thesis will focus on the optimization and development of numerical methods for one such process, the transfer of radiation, with a focus on cosmological simulations. Proper treatment of radiative transfer is crucial for understanding the phase of re-ionization of the universe. Due to the high dimensionality of the radiative transfer equation, methods based on spatial, temporal and angular discretization become computationally expensive very quickly when increasing the resolution. Furthermore, many of the methods for solving the radiative transfer problem work on structured meshes. Via Noether's theorem, any symmetry in the numerical method will lead to spurious conversation laws which may influence the formed structures. This implies that the numerical method for modeling radiative transfer needs to be adapted closely to the physical problem.

Supervisor:     Ralf Klessen   (ITA)