This thesis conveys the key technical features and scientific applications of a particle-particle ballistic simulation tool (SpaceLab) as well as a high level overview of experiments it was designed for and executed on. SpaceLab simulates spherical particle interactions under any combination of self-gravity, sliding friction, rolling friction, Van-Der-Waals (VDW) cohesion...
Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) are the most energetic explosions in the Universe, producing up to $\sim10^{53}$ ergs of energy in the first few seconds of their emission -- the so-called prompt phase that is dominated by high energy X-ray and $\gamma$-ray photons. The very large luminosities released in these events...
The discovery of GW170817 provided the first empirical evidence that merging binary neutron star systems are both progenitors of short gamma-ray bursts, as well as the primary sites of the nucleosynthetic rapid-neutron capture process. Initially detected as gravitational wave (GW) and gamma-ray burst (GRB) triggers, GW170817 was well-localized and follow-up...
Gamma ray bursts are some of the brightest events in the entire observable universe. Since the late 1960’s, thousands of gamma ray bursts have been observed and they have been researched extensively. However, there are still many mysteries which remain unsolved. One such mystery is whether or not the viewing...
Gamma ray bursts (GRBs) are short, intense pulses of gamma rays that emit radiation in a narrow beam. Unless the beam is oriented towards the observer, it is often difficult to resolve the bursts against the diffuse gamma ray background (DGRB). The DGRB is a measured source of gamma rays...
The formation of carbonaceous and silicate precursor molecules to astrophysical dust grains is investigated. Using density functional theory (DFT) in combination with global optimization techniques, the ground-state binding energies of dust precursors are determined. These results are employed in atomistic nucleation theory (ANT) to predict the critical size and nucleation...
Outflowing streams of matter or jets are a common phenomenon in the observeduniverse. The most extreme and powerful jets are relativistic, i.e., they travel at speedscomparable to the of speed light. Gamma Ray-Bursts (GRBs) and Active Galactic Nuclei(AGNs) are two sources of these relativistic jets. In this work I will...
We analyze merger parameters of binary black hole systems (BBHSs), including orbital separation and time at which gravitational and viscous timescales intersect for all combinations of black holes (BHs) in the range 1-100 solar masses. Our initial examination of BBHS merger parameters using the assumption R=0.5r reveals suspicious trends in...
We present an analysis of the relationship between spectral lag and luminosity in time-resolved segments of long gamma-ray bursts detected by BATSE, an experiment aboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite. For full bursts, there is a well-established correlation between the lag, which is easily computed, and the total burst...
We construct a Monte Carlo simulation in Python to calculate optical flashes at 5x10¹⁴ Hz peaking at 6x10³¹ erg s⁻¹Hz⁻¹St⁻¹ due to synchrotron radiation from the reverse shock of a gamma-ray burst’s jet. While analytical solutions to this problem exist, they rely on sweeping simplifications of what is necessarily a...