Collaborative Research: Enabling Breakthrough Kinetic Simulations of the Magnetosphere via Multi-zone Petascale Computing

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).This project will develop an advanced 3-D hybrid simulation code (fluid electrons + kinetic ions) that included the coupling of the magnetosphere to the ionosphere. The hybrid magnetosphere model will be coupled an ionospheric model developed at the Naval Research Laboratory. The existing code (H3D) will be enhanced for petascale application with advanced techniques such as multi-zone asynchronous time-stepping and particle splitting. The resulting code, called H3DM ("M" for multi-zone) will be validated by comparing model results with observational data from a variety of NASA missions.The successful development of a 3-D global, hybrid simulation of the magnetosphere with realistic coupling to the ionosphere has the potential to be transformative in our abilities to model and predict how the solar wind couples to Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere.The project has societal benefits because of its relevance to space weather and space technology. The project has educational benefits and includes both undergraduates an graduate students in the research.