Transformative Petascale Particle-in-cell simulations

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This project accesses computational resources on the Blue Waters computer to answer several compelling science questions. The UCLA Simulation of Plasmas Group has spent several decades developing deep physics understanding of phenomenon in key areas of plasma physics. It has also helped to formulate key compelling questions in each of these areas, that if answered could be transformative. It has built up a comprehensive suite of fully kinetic plasma simulation tools that include a variety of physics, that are highly optimized on a single compute core, and that scale to the full size of leadership-class computers such as Blue Waters. It is anticipated that the obtained resources on Blue Waters will enable transformative simulations in diverse areas of plasma physics including plasmas based acceleration, inertial fusion energy, astrophysics, and space weather. Presently at UCLA and within the OSIRIS Consortium there are six distinct parallel PIC codes, with varying degrees of physics approximations, being used to explore a wide range of phenomena. All of these codes were self-built and are self-maintained; several use the same particle manager for the parallelization. These codes are highly optimized on a single processor and have very high parallel efficiency, e.g., OSIRIS has already been shown to scale to more than 1,500,000 cores on Sequoia and the full Blue Waters machine. These simulations will not only enable answers to compelling science questions, but they will also provide insight into fundamental nonlinear and high energy density science as well as on how to use particle-in-cell codes effectively on leadership class facilities.