This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Prior NSF support was used to develop a multi-dimensional discrete-event software infrastructure, Simulation Time Operating System (STOS), which enables effective separation of physics applications ("drivers") from a generic event processing component ("kernel"). The proposed activity will focus on applying the new technology to an important plasma modeling paradigm: quasi-neutral hybrid particle simulation. This approximation extends magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) by treating ions are as kinetic species (macro-particles) and electrons as a massless fluid. This proposal pursues three main goals: (1) build a robust virtual laboratory for hybrid plasma simulations (VHPL) with performance and accuracy capabilities unmatched by conventional hybrid codes, (2) perform end-to-end 3D simulations in support of the on-going experiment on spheromak merging at Swarthmore College (SSX), and (3) develop a robust educational version of VHPL for teaching fundamentals of plasma physics to undergraduate students at Swarthmore.
The methods developed will make possible simulation of large systems with inclusion of small scale kinetic effects. These methods might be useful for including micro-turbulent effects into Fusion transport codes. Swarthmore undergraduate students will be trained to use simulation tools developed and be involved in modeling the Swarthmore experiments.
This proposal was submitted to the NSF-DoE Partnership in Plasma Science and Engineering joint solicitation 08-589. This award is being funded jointly by the Plasma and Computational Physics Programs in the Division of Physics.
