Theoretical Astrophysics

We review current understanding of star formation, outlining an overall theoretical framework and the observations that motivate it. A conception of star formation has emerged in which turbulence plays a dual role, both creating overdensities to…

Recent years have witnessed dramatic progress in our understanding of how turbulence arises and transports angular momentum in astrophysical accretion disks. The key conceptual point has its origins in work dating from the 1950s, but its…

Binary neutron-star (BNS) systems represent primary sources for the gravitational-wave (GW) detectors. We present a systematic investigation in full GR of the dynamics and GW emission from BNS which inspiral and merge, producing a black hole (BH)…

Stellar clusters are born embedded within giant molecular clouds (GMCs) and during their formation and early evolution are often only visible at infrared wavelengths, being heavily obscured by dust. Over the last 15 years advances in infrared…

This article presents a comprehensive overview of numerical hydrodynamics and magneto- hydrodynamics (MHD) in general relativity. Some significant additions have been incorporated with respect to the previous two versions of this review (2000,…

Estimating errors is a crucial part of any scientific analysis. Whenever a parameter is estimated (model-based or not), an error estimate is necessary. Any parameter estimate that is given without an error estimate is meaningless. Nevertheless, many…

We report on the completion of the first version of a new-generation simulation code, FLASH. The FLASH code solves the fully compressible, reactive hydrodynamic equations and allows for the use of adaptive mesh refinement. It also contains…

Understanding the predictions of general relativity for the dynamical interactions of two black holes has been a long-standing unsolved problem in theoretical physics. Black-hole mergers are monumental astrophysical events, releasing tremendous…

A broad class of astronomical accretion disks is presently shown to be dynamically unstable to axisymmetric disturbances in the presence of a weak magnetic field, an insight with consequently broad applicability to gaseous, differentially-rotating…

Libraries of stellar spectra are fundamental tools for the study of stellar populations, and both empirical and synthetic libraries have been used for this purpose. In this paper, a new library of high resolution synthetic spectra is presented,…

Formulae for the line-of-sight and transverse comoving distances, proper motion distance, angular diameter distance, luminosity distance, k-correction, distance modulus, comoving volume, lookback time, age, and object intersection probability are…

We review recent determinations of the present day and initial mass functions in various components of the Galaxy, disk, spheroid, young and globular clusters. As a general feature, the IMF is well described by a power-law form for mga 1 msol and a…

Steady accretion disks are considered, and attention is given to the role of viscosity, radiation mechanisms, time dependence, instability, variability, and the inner boundary in the physics of accretion disks. The major uncertainties in accretion…

It is shown that if the magnetic field and angular momentum of a Kerr black hole are large enough, the vacuum surrounding the hole is unstable because any stray charged particles will be electrostatically accelerated and will radiate, with the…

This paper brings together, into a single unified notation, the multipole formalisms for gravitational radiation which various people have constructed. It also extends the results of previous workers. More specifically: Part One of this paper…

We present the results of 16 years of monitoring stellar orbits around the massive black hole in center of the Milky Way using high resolution NIR techniques. This work refines our previous analysis mainly by greatly improving the definition of the…

The possibility is examined that angular momentum is removed magnetically from an accretion disk by field lines that leave the disk surface, and is eventually carried off in a jet moving perpendicular to the disk. The mechanism is illustrated by a…

We provide ready-to-use time-domain gravitational waveforms for spinning compact binaries with precession effects through 1.5PN order in amplitude and compute their mode decomposition using spin-weighted -2 spherical harmonics. In the presence of…

The Numerical INJection Analysis (NINJA) project is a collaborative effort between members of the numerical relativity and gravitational-wave data analysis communities. The purpose of NINJA is to study the sensitivity of existing gravitational-wave…

We present a general procedure to solve numerically the general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) equations within the framework of the 3+1 formalism. The work reported here extends our previous investigation in general relativistic…