We study the properties of double white dwarf (DWD) mergers by performing hydrodynamic simulations using the new and improved adaptive mesh refinement code octo-tiger. We follow the orbital evolution of DWD systems of mass ratio $q=0.7$ for tens of orbits until and after the merger to investigate them as a possible origin for R Coronae Borealis (RCB) type stars. We reproduce previous results, finding that during the merger, the helium WD donor star is tidally disrupted within 20–80 min since the beginning of the simulation onto the accretor carbon–oxygen WD, creating a high temperature shell around the accretor. We investigate the possible helium burning in this shell and the merged object’s general structure. Specifically, we are interested in the amount of oxygen-16 dredged-up from the accretor to the hot shell and the amount of oxygen-18 produced. This is critical as the discovery of very low oxygen-16 to oxygen-18 ratios in RCB stars pointed out the merger scenario as a favourable explanation for their origin. A small amount of hydrogen in the donor may help keep the oxygen-16 to oxygen-18 ratios within observational bounds, even if moderate dredge-up from the accretor occurs. In addition, we perform a resolution study to reconcile the difference found in the amount of oxygen-16 dredge-up between smoothed-particle hydrodynamics and grid-based simulations.
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ABSTRACT -
Octo-Tiger is a code for modeling three-dimensional self-gravitating astrophysical fluids. It was particularly designed for the study of dynamical mass transfer between interacting binary stars. Octo-Tiger is parallelized for distributed systems using the asynchronous many-task runtime system, the C++ standard library for parallelism and concurrency (HPX) and utilizes CUDA for its gravity solver. Recently, we have remodeled Octo-Tiger’s hydro solver to use a three-dimensional reconstruction scheme. In addition, we have ported the hydro solver to GPU using CUDA kernels. We present scaling results for the new hydro kernels on ORNL’s Summit machine using a Sedov-Taylor blast wave problem. We also compare Octo-Tiger’s new hydro scheme with its old hydro scheme, using a rotating star as a test problem.more » « less
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null (Ed.)ABSTRACT octo-tiger is an astrophysics code to simulate the evolution of self-gravitating and rotating systems of arbitrary geometry based on the fast multipole method, using adaptive mesh refinement. octo-tiger is currently optimized to simulate the merger of well-resolved stars that can be approximated by barotropic structures, such as white dwarfs (WDs) or main-sequence stars. The gravity solver conserves angular momentum to machine precision, thanks to a ‘correction’ algorithm. This code uses hpx parallelization, allowing the overlap of work and communication and leading to excellent scaling properties, allowing for the computation of large problems in reasonable wall-clock times. In this paper, we investigate the code performance and precision by running benchmarking tests. These include simple problems, such as the Sod shock tube, as well as sophisticated, full, WD binary simulations. Results are compared to analytical solutions, when known, and to other grid-based codes such as flash. We also compute the interaction between two WDs from the early mass transfer through to the merger and compare with past simulations of similar systems. We measure octo-tiger’s scaling properties up to a core count of ∼80 000, showing excellent performance for large problems. Finally, we outline the current and planned areas of development aimed at tackling a number of physical phenomena connected to observations of transients.more » « less
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ABSTRACT The R Coronae Borealis (RCB) stars are extremely hydrogen-deficient carbon stars that produce large amounts of dust, causing sudden deep declines in brightness. They are believed to be formed primarily through white dwarf mergers. In this paper, we use mesa to investigate how post-merger objects with a range of initial He-burning shell temperatures from 2.1 to 5.4 × 108 K with solar and subsolar metallicities evolve into RCB stars. The most successful model of these has subsolar metallicity and an initial temperature near 3 × 108 K. We find a strong dependence on initial He-burning shell temperature for surface abundances of elements involved in the CNO cycle, as well as differences in effective temperature and radius of RCBs. Elements involved in nucleosynthesis present around 1 dex diminished surface abundances in the 10 per cent solar metallicity models, with the exception of carbon and lithium that are discussed in detail. Models with subsolar metallicities also exhibit longer lifetimes than their solar counterparts. Additionally, we find that convective mixing of the burned material occurs only in the first few years of post-merger evolution, after which the surface abundances are constant during and after the RCB phase, providing evidence for why these stars show a strong enhancement of partial He-burning products.more » « less
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We present a highly scalable demonstration of a portable asynchronous many-task programming model and runtime system applied to a grid-based adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic simulation of a double white dwarf merger with 14 levels of refinement that spans 17 orders of magnitude in astrophysical densities. The code uses the portable C++ parallel programming model that is embodied in the HPX library and being incorporated into the ISO C++ standard. The model represents a significant shift from existing bulk synchronous parallel programming models under consideration for exascale systems. Through the use of the Futurization technique, seemingly sequential code is transformed into wait-free asynchronous tasks. We demonstrate the potential of our model by showing results from strong scaling runs on National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center’s Cori system (658,784 Intel Knight’s Landing cores) that achieve a parallel efficiency of 96.8% using billions of asynchronous tasks.