Special relativistic hydrodynamics with CRONOS

We describe the special relativistic extension of the CRONOS code, which has been used for studies of gamma-ray binaries in recent years. The code was designed to be easily adaptable, allowing the user to easily change existing functionalities or introduce new modules tailored to the problem at hand. Numerically, the equations are treated using a finite-volume Godunov scheme on rectangular grids, which currently support Cartesian, spherical, and cylindrical coordinates. The employed reconstruction technique, the approximate Riemann solver, and the equation of state can be chosen dynamically by the user. Further, the code was designed with stability and robustness in mind, detecting and mitigating possible failures early on. We demonstrate the code's capabilities on an extensive set of validation problems.

Automated summary

The study introduces the special relativistic extension of the CRONOS code for gamma-ray binary studies. The code is easily adaptable with support for various coordinates and designed with stability in mind.