ALcHyMiA

ALcHyMiA: Advanced Structure Preserving Lagrangian schemes for novel first order Hyperbolic Models: towards General Relativistic Astrophysics

ERC Starting Grant funded under the Horizon Europe programme, grant agreement No 101114995.
Period: 01/04/2024 -- 31/03/2029.

Budget: 1.500.000 euros.

Abstract & Objectives
ALcHyMiA will make substantial progress in applied mathematics, targeting long-time stable and self-consistent simulations in general relativity and high energy density problems, via the development of new and effective structure preserving numerical methods with provable mathematical properties. We will devise innovative schemes for hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDE) which at the discrete level exactly preserve all the invariants of the continuous problem, such as equilibria, involutions and asymptotic limits. Next to fluids and magnetohydrodynamics, key for benchmarks and valuable applications on Earth, we target a new class of first order hyperbolic systems that unifies fluid and solid mechanics and gravity theory. This allows to study gravitational waves, binary neutron stars and accretion disks around black holes that require the coupled evolution of matter and spacetime. Here, high resolution and minimal dissipation at shocks and moving interfaces are crucial and will be achieved by groundbreaking direct Arbitrary-Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) methods on moving Voronoi meshes with changing topology. These are necessary to maintain optimal grid quality even when following rotating compact objects, complex shear flows or metric torsion. They also ensure rotational invariance, entropy stability and Galilean invariance in the Newtonian limit. The breakthrough of our new Finite Volume and Discontinuous Galerkin ALE schemes lies in the geometrical understanding and high order PDE integration over 4D spacetime manifolds. The high-risk high-gain challenge is the design of smart DG schemes with bound-preserving function spaces, taking advantage of the Voronoi properties. Finally, it is an explicit mission of ALcHyMiA to grow a solid scientific community, sharing know-how by tailored dissemination activities from top-level schools to carefully organized international events revolving around personalized interactions.

Group members
✔ Elena Gaburro   (Principal Investigator)
✔ Michele Benedetti   (PhD Student)
✔ Elena Bernardelli   (PhD Student)
✔ Stefano Muzzolon   (PhD Student)
✔ Matej Klima   (Post doctoral researcher)
✔ Mauro Bonafini   (Tenure track RTT researcher, partially involved in the project)
✔ Maurizio Tavelli   (Tenure track RTT researcher, partially involved in the project)

Publications

Coming soon

Past