This project involves the acquisition of a 4,300 core computer cluster to enable leading-edge research in solar physics, the solar wind and its properties, both fluid and plasma turbulence, magnetic reconnection and plasma instabilities, and magnetospheric physics. The cluster will be located in the University of New Hampshire Research Computation and Instrumentation (RCI) core facility and operated by its staff. The installation of the cluster will take advantage of the recent modernization and expansion of the RCI machine room, which provides a stable infrastructure and efficient power supply and cooling to minimize the carbon footprint. The cluster replaces an older one, Zaphod, which is now in its eighth year of operation. While Zaphod has enabled numerous studies and some breakthroughs in computational physics, the new cluster will be at least 15 times more powerful and thus enable more leading-edge science.
The cluster will significantly enhance our ability to simulate plasma and fluid systems, benefiting research projects with more than $3.5M in combined yearly expenditures. Progress will not be just incremental, but we have good reason to believe that in many cases our progress will open up new physical regimes. Most of the simulation codes that will be used are already mature, thus the impact of the cluster on scientific productivity will be immediate. Over its lifetime, the computer cluster will enable leading-edge research for at least a dozen faculty, and many more researchers, post-docs, graduate, and undergraduate students.
Much of the research to be performed on the cluster is directly related to space weather. Our progress in modeling the solar corona, solar wind, and geospace has an immediate effect on the Nation's ability to forecast and nowcast space weather, and to understand and to mitigate its effects. The National Space Weather Program explicitly calls for the development of such capabilities. One of the projects supported addresses fundamental issues related to climate change, which is also a topic of great societal concern. The cluster will also make an impact on the education of students in all physical disciplines at UNH by giving them access to a state-of-the art computing facility. It will thus help us to attract the most qualified faculty, post-docs, and students, and it will be an extremely valuable resource for educating the next generation of computational scientists.
