Second-order accurate genuine BGK schemes for the ultra-relativistic flow simulations

This paper presents second-order accurate genuine BGK (Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook) schemes in the framework of finite volume method for the ultra-relativistic flows. Different from the existing kinetic flux-vector splitting (KFVS) or BGK-type schemes for the ultra-relativistic Euler equations, the present genuine BGK schemes are derived from the analytical solution of the Anderson-Witting model, which is given for the first time and includes the "genuine" particle collisions in the gas transport process. The BGK schemes for the ultra-relativistic viscous flows are also developed and two examples of ultra-relativistic viscous flow are designed. Several 1D and 2D numerical experiments are conducted to demonstrate that the proposed BGK schemes not only are accurate and stable in simulating ultra-relativistic inviscid and viscous flows, but also have higher resolution at the contact discontinuity than the KFVS or BGK-type schemes.Comment: 41 pages, 13 figure

High-order accurate physical-constraints-preserving finite difference WENO schemes for special relativistic hydrodynamics

The paper develops high-order accurate physical-constraints-preserving finite difference WENO schemes for special relativistic hydrodynamical (RHD) equations, built on the local Lax-Friedrich splitting, the WENO reconstruction, the physical-constraints-preserving flux limiter, and the high-order strong stability preserving time discretization. They are extensions of the positivity-preserving finite difference WENO schemes for the non-relativistic Euler equations. However, developing physical-constraints-preserving methods for the RHD system becomes much more difficult than the non-relativistic case because of the strongly coupling between the RHD equations, no explicit expressions of the primitive variables and the flux vectors, in terms of the conservative vector, and one more physical constraint for the fluid velocity in addition to the positivity of the rest-mass density and the pressure. The key is to prove the convexity and other properties of the admissible state set and discover a concave function with respect to the conservative vector replacing the pressure which is an important ingredient to enforce the positivity-preserving property for the non-relativistic case. Several one- and two-dimensional numerical examples are used to demonstrate accuracy, robustness, and effectiveness of the proposed physical-constraints-preserving schemes in solving RHD problems with large Lorentz factor, or strong discontinuities, or low rest-mass density or pressure etc.Comment: 39 pages, 13 figure

Derivation of the Lattice Boltzmann Model for Relativistic Hydrodynamics

A detailed derivation of the Lattice Boltzmann (LB) scheme for relativistic fluids recently proposed in Ref. [1], is presented. The method is numerically validated and applied to the case of two quite different relativistic fluid dynamic problems, namely shock-wave propagation in quark-gluon plasmas and the impact of a supernova blast-wave on massive interstellar clouds. Close to second order convergence with the grid resolution, as well as linear dependence of computational time on the number of grid points and time-steps, are reported

Relativistic Hydrodynamic Flows Using Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Structured Mesh Refinement

Astrophysical relativistic flow problems require high resolution three-dimensional numerical simulations. In this paper, we describe a new parallel three-dimensional code for simulations of special relativistic hydrodynamics (SRHD) using both spatially and temporally structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). We used the method of lines to discretize the SRHD equations spatially and a total variation diminishing (TVD) Runge-Kutta scheme for time integration. For spatial reconstruction, we have implemented piecewise linear method (PLM), piecewise parabolic method (PPM), third order convex essentially non-oscillatory (CENO) and third and fifth order weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) schemes. Flux is computed using either direct flux reconstruction or approximate Riemann solvers including HLL, modified Marquina flux, local Lax-Friedrichs flux formulas and HLLC. The AMR part of the code is built on top of the cosmological Eulerian AMR code {\sl enzo}. We discuss the coupling of the AMR framework with the relativistic solvers. Via various test problems, we emphasize the importance of resolution studies in relativistic flow simulations because extremely high resolution is required especially when shear flows are present in the problem. We also present the results of two 3d simulations of astrophysical jets: AGN jets and GRB jets. Resolution study of those two cases further highlights the need of high resolutions to calculate accurately relativistic flow problems.Comment: 14 pages, 23 figures. A section on 3D GRB jet simulation added. Accepted by ApJ