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Abstract

Einstein’s theory of gravity is among the greatest products of the human mind that has emerged over the course of our history. According to Einstein, gravity is a geometric phenomenon, a manifestation of the curvature of the fabric we call spacetime. And this fabric can support, like the surface of a pond, waves that are generated by catastrophic events such as colliding black holes, colliding neutron stars, and the explosive deaths of massive stars known as core collapse supernovae. A new window on the Universe was opened when in 2015 gravitational waves were detected for the very first time, from the collision of two black holes 1.3 billion light years away. This was made possible by more than fifty years of development on the part of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration. As we will discuss, the detection itself is nothing short of miraculous. Since then, LIGO has detected many two-black-hole collisions and several two-neutron-star collisions. The gravitational waves from a core collapse supernova have yet to be detected, and we are preparing fervently for this eventuality. Core collapse supernovae are directly or indirectly responsible for the lion’s share of the elements in the periodic table, the building blocks of life as we know it. We are here because of a circle of life that has occurred on a cosmic scale. Needless to say, the detection of gravitational waves from a core collapse supernova will in and of itself be important. Moreover, gravitational waves from such a supernova will bring volumes of information about the dynamics of the central engine powering these explosions, something the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee supernova group has studied for many years. I look forward to discussing all of the above with you.

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Anthony Mezzacappa is a physicist who has worked in the areas of astrophysics and cosmology and specializes in the theory of core collapse supernovae and in the development of computational methods and simulation frameworks for simulations of such supernovae on leadership-class supercomputing platforms. Currently he is the Newton W. and Wilma C. Thomas Chair in Theoretical and Computational Astrophysics and the College of Arts and Sciences Excellence Professor, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. From 2012 to 2019, he served as the Director of the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences, joint between the University of Tennessee, its six UT-Battelle partner universities, and ORNL. Prior to joining the University of Tennessee, Dr. Mezzacappa was at ORNL, where he was Corporate Fellow, Group Leader for Theoretical Physics in its Physics Division, Group Leader for Computational Astrophysics in its Computer Science and Mathematics Division, and he created one of the leading core collapse supernova theory programs in the world. 

He completed his B.S. degree in physics at M.I.T. in 1980, and his Ph.D. in physics at the Center for Relativity at the University of Texas at Austin in 1988, one of the world’s leading centers for the study of relativity and its astrophysical applications.   Dr. Mezzacappa held postdoctoral appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before joining ORNL in 1996

Dr. Mezzacappa has authored or coauthored 168 scientific publications, has edited or coedited 8 volumes in his field or in the broader field of computational science, and has given more than 200 presentations internationally. He was the Principal Investigator of the first large-scale, multi-investigator, multi-institutional computational astrophysics effort in the U.S. to focus on core collapse supernovae: the DOE SciDAC Terascale Supernova Initiative. Dr. Mezzacappa was a member of the DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee’s Exascale Subcommittee and coauthor of several reports motivating tera-, peta-, and exa-scale computing. Most recently, he served as Deputy Theory Chair of the Core Collapse Supernova Subgroup of the Gravitational Wave International Committee’s (GWIC) Third Generation (3G) Science Case Team, whose responsibility was to develop the report The Science Case for the Next-Generation of Ground-Based Gravitational-Wave Detectors motivating investment in next-generation gravitational wave detectors. Dr. Mezzacappa also serves as Chair of the international Supernova Multi-messenger Consortium, which he founded to assist the LIGO–Virgo—KAGRA Scientific Collaboration in its efforts to detect gravitational waves from core collapse supernovae. He serves on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of High-Performance Computing Applicationssince 2006, served on the Editorial Board of Computational Science and Discovery from 2005 – 2014, and served as Scientific Editor-in-Chief of Computational Science and Discovery from 2005 – 2010.

Dr. Mezzacappa has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards for his contributions to core collapse supernova theory and to the development of computational science in the U.S. Among these were the DOE Young Scientist Award from Secretary of Energy Richardson and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Clinton in 1999. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.