Transformative Petascale Particle-In-Cell Simulations

该项目将使用Blue沃茨来实现变革性的模拟，以回答等离子体物理学中几个引人注目的科学问题。 这些问题包括：1.激光等离子体的不稳定性能在惯性聚变等离子体中得到控制甚至利用吗？2.在无碰撞等离子体中形成冲击的集体过程是什么？3.基于等离子体的加速能否成为用于能源前沿、医学、探测材料和新型光源的新型紧凑型加速器的基础？该项目将使用该团队开发的一套全动力学等离子体模拟工具来回答这些问题。特别是，等离子体模拟工具是基于粒子在细胞（PIC）的方法，已成功地探索了广泛的前沿课题。 四个不同的并行PIC代码，具有不同程度的物理近似，将在该项目中使用。 所有代码都在单处理器上进行了高度优化，具有非常高的并行效率。就项目的广泛影响而言，该项目开发的PIC代码有可能用于影响当前研究之外的多个领域的科学发现，这些领域具有重大的社会影响，例如高能物理，聚变能源和通信卫星的可靠性。此外，为将科学代码移植到未来的大规模并行架构而开发的编程抽象将影响科学计算的许多其他领域，识别这些抽象是可能使该过程自动化的第一步。最后，拟议的研究将与新的NSF资助的加州大学洛杉矶分校的粒子和动力学模拟软件中心（PICKSC）以及数字研究和教育研究所（IDRE）协同工作。这将使研究结果广泛影响等离子体细胞内粒子社区和加州大学洛杉矶分校计算科学社区的研究和教育。PI目前是PICKSC和IDRE的主任。

This project will use Blue Waters to enable transformative simulations that will answer several compelling science questions in plasma physics. These questions include: 1. Can laser plasma instabilities be controlled or even harnessed in inertial fusion plasmas? 2. What are the collective processes responsible for the formation of shocks in collisionless plasmas, 3.Can plasma-based acceleration be the basis of new compact accelerators for use at the energy frontier, in medicine, in probing materials, and in novel light sources?The project will use a suite of fully kinetic plasma simulation tools developed by the team to answer these questions. In particular, the plasma simulation tools are based on particle-in-cell (PIC) methods which have been successful in exploring a wide range of frontier topics. Four distinct parallel PIC codes, with varying degrees of physics approximations, will be used in the project. All the codes are highly optimized on a single processor and have very high parallel efficiency.In terms of the broader impact of the project, the PIC codes developed by the project could potentially be used to make scientific discoveries that impact diverse fields beyond the current investigation with significant societal impact such as high-energy physics, fusion energy, and reliability of communication satellites. Additionally, the programming abstractions developed for porting scientific codes to future massively parallel architectures will impact many others areas of scientific computing and identifying these abstractions are the first steps for possibly automating the process. Finally, the proposed research will synergize with the new NSF funded Particle-in-Cell and Kinetic Simulation Software Center (PICKSC) at UCLA and the Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE). This will allow results to broadly impact research and education within the plasma particle-in-cell community and the computational science community at UCLA. The PI is currently the director of both PICKSC and IDRE.