Portable Parallel Code For Plasma Simulations: Development Experience And Initial Results

Abstract

Plasma physics covers a wide variety of phenomena that are beyond the reach of symbolic mathematics, and for which experiments are often difficult. It is necessary to rely on computer experiments to test theories and understand the data. The authors describe progress in constructing a portable parallel Particle in Cell (PIC) code for three dimensional plasma simulations, and initial physics results using it for the Global Heliosphere problem. The code is designed to scale well to large parallel machines to take advantage of the fastest computers that are likely to be found in the foreseeable future. It is designed to allow the user to do a straight fluid (MHD) simulation, a kinetic PIC simulation to sample the velocity-space behavior of a system or a FLIP PIC simulation to model a low dissipation continuum fluid. It is designed to allow as much as possible of the algorithm to be written in dimension-independent style to allow the code to be used in 1, 2 or 3 dimensional systems. It is designed to be able to handle moderately complex geometries efficiently through the use of multiple patches, each of which is a deformable logically cartesian mesh. It is designed for several types ofmore » portability: to different numerics, physics, architectures, and people.« less