Continuation of Petascale Simulation of HED Plasmas

该项目将使用Blue Waters独特的能力来研究几个具有国家重要性的等离子体物理问题。具体地说，这个项目将使用加州大学洛杉矶分校的粒子细胞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作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。它还将有助于确定是否可以控制或利用激光等离子体不稳定性来成功演示惯性聚变。最后，它将被用来理解无碰撞激波中的结构、形成和粒子加速，这可能有助于开发高能离子源，并了解相对论无碰撞激波是否对宇宙中最高能量的粒子负责。加州大学洛杉矶分校等离子体小组的模拟花了几十年的时间对等离子体物理关键领域的现象进行了深入的物理理解。它还帮助制定了这些领域中每一个领域的关键、令人信服的问题，如果得到回答，这些问题可能会产生变革。该团队已经建立了一套全面的基于粒子单元方法的全动力学等离子体模拟软件工具，其中包括各种物理知识，这些工具在单个计算核心上进行了高度优化，并可扩展到诸如Blue Waters等领先级别计算机的全尺寸。其中一些软件以开放源代码的形式提供。该项目开发的代码用于做出影响各种具有重大社会影响的领域的科学发现，如高能物理、聚变能源以及天文和空间物理。

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.