Computer simulations using the particle-in-cell (PIC) method are widely used for basic and applied research involving plasma physics applications. For example, simulations that calculate the self-consistent interaction of charged particles aid in the development of new accelerator technologies, new radiation sources, are used in magnetic and inertial fusion research, and help understand the physics of the solar wind. The Particle-in-Cell and Kinetic Simulation Software Center (PICKSC) at UCLA will aim to significantly broaden the impact of PIC simulations by making available and documenting illustrative software programs for different computing hardware, a flexible Framework for rapid construction of parallelized PIC programs, and several distinct production programs. This project will also include activities on developing and comparing different PIC algorithms and documenting best practices for developing and using PIC programs. The activities fostered by this project will bring together an interdisciplinary team of faculty, research staff, post-doctoral scholars, and graduate students. Important goals of this project include also the development of educational software for undergraduate and graduate courses in plasma physics and computer science and will, to build a large community of users through outreach and an annual workshop.
The broader impact of the activities fostered by this project will be significant. A well-documented set of components and example codes for running on large computers and a set of basic production codes will allow students and researchers from all levels and many disciplines to understand the inner workings of optimized PIC and kinetic simulation software used to model plasmas. It will allow them to build their own software, or to make independent comparisons against commercially available codes, against their own codes, and against published simulation data. The availability of production codes to more researchers will increase the rate of scientific discovery. The software will allow computer scientists who are developing tools that allow existing software to use next generation hardware to compare their performances against highly optimized codes, and will provide new code developers a test-bed of parallelized and optimized software for performance comparison. Furthermore, this projet will make state-of-the-art research software available for education, both for physics and computer science courses, will help train the next generation of plasma physicists (in many sub disciplines) and computational scientists. Interactive tools based on simpler skeleton codes will also be useful for undergraduate and high school education. Documenting examples of best practices will save graduate students and new researchers significant time in learning how to best employ PIC simulations.
