Terascale simulations for heavy ion inertial fusion energy
The intense ion beams in a heavy ion Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) driver and fusion chamber are non-neutral plasmas whose dynamics are largely dominated by space charge. We propose to develop a ''source-to-target'' Heavy Ion Fusion (HIF) beam simulation capability: a description of the kinetic behavior of this complex, nonlinear system which is both integrated and detailed. We will apply this new capability to further our understanding of key scientific issues in the physics of ion beams for IFE. The simulations will entail self-consistent field descriptions that require interprocessor communication, but are scalable and will run efficiently on terascale architectures. This new capability will be based on the integration of three types of simulations, each requiring terascale computing: (1) simulations of acceleration and confinement of the space-charge-dominated ion beams through the driver (accelerator, pulse compression line, and final focusing system) which accurately describe their dynamics, including emittance growth (phase-space dilution) effects; these are particle-in-cell (PIC) models; (2) electromagnetic (EM) and magnetoinductive (Darwin) simulations which describe the beam and the fusion chamber environment, including multibeam, neutralization, stripping, beam and plasma ionization processes, and return current effects; and (3) highly detailed simulations (6f, multispecies PIC, continuum Vlasov), which can examine electron effects and collective modes in the driver and chamber, and can study halo generation with excellent statistics, to ensure that these effects do not disrupt the focusability of the beams. The code development will involve: (i) adaptation of existing codes to run efficiently on multi-SMP computers that use a hybrid of shared and distributed memory; (ii) development of new and improved numerical algorithms, e.g., averaging techniques that will afford larger timesteps; and (iii) incorporation of improved physics models (e.g., for self-magnetic, module impedance, atomic physics, and multibeam effects) that will be made practical by the terascale capability. The codes will be linked using scripting tools for intercommunication and code steering, ''workspace'' tools for heterogeneous computations, and self-describing data files (e.g., NetCDF).
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 15006432
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-ID-135343; TRN: US0400764
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 8 Jun 2000
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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