Embedding Lagrangian Sink Particles in Eulerian Grids

Abstract

We introduce a new computational method for embedding Lagrangian sink particles into an Eulerian calculation. Simulations of gravitational collapse or accretion generally produce regions whose density greatly exceeds the mean density in the simulation. These dense regions require extremely small time steps to maintain numerical stability. Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) codes approach this problem by introducing non-gaseous, accreting sink particles, and Eulerian codes may introduce fixed sink cells. However, until now there has been no approach that allows Eulerian codes to follow accretion onto multiple, moving objects. We have removed that limitation by extending the sink particle capability to Eulerian hydrodynamics codes. We have tested this new method and found that it produces excellent agreement with analytic solutions. In analyzing our sink particle method, we present a method for evaluating the disk viscosity parameter $\alpha$ due to the numerical viscosity of a hydrodynamics code, and use it to compute $\alpha$ for our Cartesian AMR code. We also present a simple application of this new method: studying the transition from Bondi to Bondi-Hoyle accretion that occurs when a shock hits a particle undergoing Bondi accretion.