Continuation of Petascale Simulation of HED Plasmas

该项目将利用Blue沃茨独特的能力来研究具有国家重要性的等离子体物理学中的几个问题。具体来说，该项目将使用UCLA的particle-in-cell软件来解决三个科学领域的基础研究问题。这项研究将有助于确定基于等离子体的加速是否可以成为新的紧凑型加速器的基础，用于能源前沿，作为下一代相干x射线源，应用于医学，材料科学和国土安全。 它还将有助于确定激光等离子体不稳定性是否可以被控制或利用来成功地演示惯性聚变。 最后，它将被用来了解结构，形成，和粒子加速碰撞少冲击，这可能有助于开发高能离子源，并了解如果相对论碰撞少冲击，负责宇宙中最高能的粒子。加州大学洛杉矶分校等离子体组的模拟已经花了几十年的发展等离子体物理的关键领域的现象的深刻的物理理解。 它还帮助在每个领域提出了关键的紧迫问题，如果得到回答，可能会产生变革。该团队已经建立了一套全面的全动力学等离子体模拟软件工具，该工具基于粒子在细胞中的方法，包括各种物理，在单个计算核心上进行了高度优化，并可扩展到Blue沃茨等领导级计算机的全尺寸。其中一些软件是开源的。 该项目开发的代码用于做出影响具有重大社会影响的不同领域的科学发现，如高能物理学，聚变能以及天文和空间物理学。

This project will use Blue Waters unique capabilities to research several problems in plasma physics that are of national importance. Specifically, this project will use UCLA particle-in-cell software to address fundamental research questions in three science areas. This research will help determine if plasma-based acceleration can be the basis of new compact accelerators for use at the energy frontier, as a next generation coherent x-ray sources with applications in medicine, material science, and in homeland security. It will also help to determine if laser plasma instabilities can be controlled or harnessed to successfully demonstrate inertial fusion. Finally, it will be used to understand the structure, formation, and particle acceleration in collision less shocks that may help to develop energetic ion sources and to understand if relativistic collision less shocks that are responsible for the most energetic particles in the universe.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. The team has built up a comprehensive suite of fully kinetic plasma simulation software tools based on the particle-in-cell method 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. Some of this software is available as open source. Codes developed by the project are used to make scientific discoveries that impact diverse fields with significant societal impact such as high-energy physics, fusion energy, and astro and space physics.