Fully Relativistic Simulations of the Inspiral and Merger of Black Hole - Neutron Star Binaries Patrick M. Motl 1, M. Anderson 2, M. Besselman 3, S. Chawla 2, E. W. Hirschmann 3, L. Lehner 4, S. L. Liebling 5, D. Neilsen 3, J. E. Tohline 2 1 Indiana University Kokomo, 2 Louisiana State University, 3 Brigham Young University, 4 The Perimeter Institute, Canada, 5 Long Island University.

Initial Setup Lorene initial data Neutron Star: Irrotational, Γ = 2 R = 15 [km] M = 1.4 M solar Initial dipole field of strength [Gauss] Black Hole: M = 7 M Solar a = 0, 0.5 Initial separation of 100 [km] Grid extends to ± 443 [km] Peak resolution of 0.73 [km] or 40 points across initial neutron star

Simulations Explore the parameter space of initial separation {90, 100, 150 [km]} black hole spin {0, 0.5} initial magnetic field {0, [Gauss]} Adaptive Mesh Refinement with the had package to couple Einstein solver: generalized harmonic formalism with excision MHD solver: High resolution shock-capturing code using PPM reconstruction and HLLE flux Information about had and the application codes available at

Gravitational Radiation measured from Ψ 4 a = 0, B = a = 0.5, B = 0 and a = 0.5, B = 10 12

Evolution with a = 0, B = 10 12

Evolution with a = 0.5, B = 10 12

Evolution with a = 0.5, B = 0

Vertical Structure with a = 0.5 UnmagnetizedB = initially M Disk = 1.6%M Disk = 1.7%

Summary Effects from magnetic field appear minimal in these NS+BH binaries at least to this point in the evolution and with this (rather low) resolution. This work was supported by the NSF through grants PHY and PHY to LSU. Thanks also to the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Kokomo for their support. The computations presented here were performed on resources from the Teragrid and the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI).