Astrophysical code designed by U. de Concepción astronomer wins international recognition

The award was given to Dr. Stefano Bovino, who is also a researcher at the CATA Center of Excellence in Astrophysics. The development was devised jointly with the astrophysicist Tommaso Grassi to carry out astrochemistry research.

Krome is an open source computational program that led to the birth of a whole school in which researchers, as well as master’s, doctoral and postdoctoral students are currently participating. More than 200 people have already been trained in its use.

It is for this reason that the German Astronomical Association awarded Dr. Stefano Bovino the Astrophysical Software Award, which he received together with Dr. Tommaso Grassi, an astronomer based in Germany and member of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. The award, which is given every two years for this category, recognizes the contribution of this platform used to describe the thermal evolution of gas, including chemical and thermal processes in hydrodynamic simulations.

Professor Bovino explains that Krome enables a better understanding of phenomena such as the formation of galaxies, stars and black holes. “With Krome we perform dynamical simulations to understand the physics of various regions of space. Normally what one wants to do is to include the thermodynamics part, to know how both the temperature of the gas and the chemistry of the interstellar medium is regulated and evolves in order to compare theoretical results with observations.”

An example of KROME’s application is in the study of the formation of molecular clouds. These zones, which are hundreds of light-years across, have high matter density and low temperature, and are one of the most important sectors in star formation processes. KROME allows coupling data from the hydrodynamic part with the thermochemical part, achieving a better understanding and simulation of the creation of these mega structures in the cosmos.