Talk detail

Participant	Etienne, Zachariah
Institution	University of Illinois - 1110 West Green Street - Urbana - Illinois - USA

Session	AN5	Accepted		Order	Time
Talk	Oral abstract	Title	Fully General Relativistic Simulations of Magnetized Neutron Star--Black Hole Binary Mergers
Co-authors
Abstract	As a neutron star (NS) is disrupted by black hole (BH) tidal fields at the end of a BH--NS binary inspiral, its magnetic fields will be stretched and amplified. These magnetic fields may impact the gravitational waveforms, merger evolution and mass of the remnant disk. Formation of highly-collimated magnetic field lines in the remnant may launch relativistic jets, driving an SGRB. We analyze this scenario through fully general relativistic, magnetohydrodynamic BH--NS simulations from inspiral through merger and disk formation. Multiple seed magnetic field configurations are chosen, starting with both nonspinning and moderately-spinning ($a/M$=0.75) BHs aligned with the orbital angular momentum. We find that detecting the effects of even strong magnetic fields may be challenging for Advanced LIGO. While there is no evidence of outflows during the preliminary simulations we have explored, longer disk evolutions, improved resolution and different field topologies will be required to more thoroughly assess the plausibility of BHNS binaries as SGRB progenitors.