Crustal magnetic field amplification in binary neutron star mergers: Vorticity

The movie shows the merger and post-merger evolution of two equal mass neutron star binaries with a total mass of approximately 2.5 solar masses. The 2D slices of the density-weighted vorticity are shown for the xy-plane in the top row and for the xz-plane in the bottom row. The contours of constant baryonic density are shown in dashed (10^13 g cm^-3) and solid (7x10^14 g cm^-3) green lines. The two configurations differ by having different magnetic-field topologies, i.e. the left column shows the standard full-configuration with magnetic fields permeating the whole stellar structure while the right column shows the crust-configuration where magnetic fields are concentrated only in the crust after having been expelled from the core. Publications: https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.13661 Credits: Michail Chabanov, Samuel Tootle, Elias Most, Luciano Rezzolla Links: Relativistic Astrophysics group page: https://relastro.uni-frankfurt.de/ JETSET page: https://jetset-erc.org/ ELEMENTS page: https://elements.science