Kilonovae radiative transfer simulations from neutron star mergers
C. Collins*, L.J. Shingles and V. Vijayan
*: corresponding author
Full text: pdf
Published on: March 04, 2026
Abstract
When neutron stars merge, an explosive kilonova transient is produced and the heaviest (r-process) elements in the Universe are synthesised. By studying kilonovae we have an opportunity to understand r-process nucleosynthesis. To interpret kilonova observations, however, requires detailed modelling. In this article we discuss our simulation efforts towards interpreting kilonova observations and we highlight a number of uncertainties and challenges still to be addressed in kilonova modelling. We find that our simulation shows reasonable agreement with the observations of AT2017gfo, allowing us to identify that kilonova spectral features are likely blends of different features due to Doppler broadening. We also highlight the need to carry out 3D kilonova simulations. Further modelling is still required to understand kilonova observations.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22323/1.475.0006
How to cite

Metadata are provided both in article format (very similar to INSPIRE) as this helps creating very compact bibliographies which can be beneficial to authors and readers, and in proceeding format which is more detailed and complete.

Open Access
Creative Commons LicenseCopyright owned by the author(s) under the term of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.