Science Overview

The mission of the Towards Exascale Astrophysics of Mergers and Supernovae (TEAMS) collaboration is to pursue the astrophysical origin of the elements through simulations of astrophysical objects and events using the highest-performing computational resources available. Specifically, we are interested in determining the astrophysical sites where heavy elements may be produced by the astrophysical r-process and p-process.

To achieve this mission, we have assembled a collaboration with broad expertise in the nuclear physics, astrophysics and computational science in order to attack the many facets of our uncertainties about the r-process and p-process. TEAMS includes research in the following areas relevant to our mission,

Achieving our mission requires the synergy of these individual research areas. For example, nuclear matter and neutrino interactions with this nuclear matter, as well as conventional atomic nuclei, are essential elements of core-collapse supernovae and neutron star mergers. Therefore, the research efforts on nuclear matter and neutrino interactions provide essential input to our simulations of the supernovae and mergers. In a similar fashion, the final stages of the life of a massive star prior to its death in a core-collapse supernova set stage for the supernova. Therefore, research efforts on massive stellar evolution provide the critical initial conditions for supernova simulations.

Our work does not end with the simulations of the core-collapse supernova or neutron star merger event. We must explore the nucleosynthesis that results, as well as the potential impact of our imperfect knowledge of the nuclear reactions that contribute to this nucleosynthesis. Finally, to test our simulations against the wealth of astronomical observations of supernovae and now neutron star mergers, we must compute how the signatures of our simulations would appear in to the various detectors and telescopes gathering this data.