End-to-End Modeling of the Kilonova Zoo

From the iodine in our bodies to the gold in our jewelry, heavy elements occupy myriad roles in human life. But how did these elements come to exist? This question lies at the heart of my talk, which will focus on mergers involving neutron stars and the 'kilonova' transients they produce. The landmark 2017 detection of the kilonova AT2017gfo confirmed that neutron star mergers are a site of heavy element production. But interpreting kilonovae and predicting the potentially diverse properties they might display has been challenging in the absence of self-consistent numerical models. In this talk, I will present our latest end-to-end kilonova models based on general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations of merger remnants, bridging the gap that extends from the end of merger simulations to the kilonova phase. I will show how detailed numerical modeling allows us to understand the properties of merger ejecta, interpret past and future kilonova observations, and gain insight into the origin of heavy elements.