

Relativity is a necessary ingredient for describing astrophysical
phenomena involving compact objects. Among these phenomena are
core collapse supernovae, X-ray binaries, pulsars, coalescing
neutron stars, black hole formations, micro-quasars, active
galactic nuclei, superluminal jets and gamma-ray bursts. When
strong gravitational fields are encountered as, for example, in
the case of coalescing neutron stars or near black holes, general
relativistic effects must be considered. Also the significant
gravitational wave signal produced by some of these phenomena can
only be understood in the framework of the general theory of
relativity. There are, however, astrophysical phenomena which
involve flows at relativistic speeds but no strong gravitational
fields, and thus at least certain aspects of these phenomena can
be described within the framework of special relativity alone,
disregarding general relativistic effects.
Another field of research, where special relativistic
``flows'' are encountered, are present-day heavy-ion collision
experiments taking place in large particle accelerators. The
heavy ions are accelerated to ultra-relativistic velocities very
close to the speed of light (
[166
]) to study the equation of state for hot dense nuclear
matter.


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Numerical Hydrodynamics in Special Relativity
Jose Maria Martí and Ewald Müller
http://www.livingreviews.org/lrr-1999-3
© Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. ISSN 1433-8351
Problems/Comments to
livrev@aei-potsdam.mpg.de
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