VESF
Double-degenerate binaries, consisting of white dwarfs, neutron stars or stellar mass black holes occur in dense clusters in much higher frequency than in a field studied by simple population models, as our recent paper (Downing et al. 2009) has again confirmed. The final merger of these objects is one of the sources of gravitational radiation for the first generation of ground-based interferometric detectors. By studying their dynamical formation history and frequency we can predict event rates for VIRGO. In a project submitted to VESF we propose to use both our Monte Carlo (MC) and direct N-body integration codes (Aarseth 2003, Spurzem 1999, Giersz 1998, Giersz & Spurzem 2000, 2003) to produce an extended database of gravitational wave sources from globular and young dense star clusters. Our primary goal is to predict event rates from galactic and extragalactic globular and young dense star clusters through a parameter study.
In this project we are collaborating with M. Giersz (mig@camk.edu.pl) of Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Centre, Warsaw, Poland , M. Benacquista (benacquista@phys.utb.edu) , Univ. of Texas at Brownsville, USA , A. Gopakumar (gopu@tifr.res.in) , Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India , and the team of G. Schäfer (G.Schaefer@tpi.uni-jena.de) , Theoretical Physics Institute at the University of Jena . Together with Jena we constitute a member group within the VESF Council
The tool to use are besides Monte Carlo codes (Giersz 1998, Giersz & Spurzem 2000, 2003, Downing et al. 2009) direct accurate N-body simulations, using NBODY6++ (a massively parallel offspring of Sverre Aarseth's N-body codes, on our local GRACE supercomputers as well as in the Frontier Project funded by the University of Heidelberg through the University of Heidelberg Excellence Scheme , in collaboration with Ralf Klessen , Robi Banerjee (ITA) and Reiner Männer , Andreas Kugel , Guillermo Marcus (ZITI) .
