THE PLUTO CODE FOR ADAPTIVE MESH COMPUTATIONS IN ASTROPHYSICAL FLUID DYNAMICS

Journal Article · Sun Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2012 · Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0067-0049/198/1/7· OSTI ID:22047227

Tzeferacos, P ^[1]; Zanni, C; Bodo, G ^[2]; Van Straalen, B; Colella, P ^[3]

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1. Dipartimento di Fisica Generale, Universita di Torino, via Pietro Giuria 1, 10125 Torino (Italy)
2. INAF, Osservatorio Astronomico di Torino, Strada Osservatorio 20, Pino Torinese 10025 (Italy)
3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, MS 50A-1148, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)

We present a description of the adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) implementation of the PLUTO code for solving the equations of classical and special relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (MHD and RMHD). The current release exploits, in addition to the static grid version of the code, the distributed infrastructure of the CHOMBO library for multidimensional parallel computations over block-structured, adaptively refined grids. We employ a conservative finite-volume approach where primary flow quantities are discretized at the cell center in a dimensionally unsplit fashion using the Corner Transport Upwind method. Time stepping relies on a characteristic tracing step where piecewise parabolic method, weighted essentially non-oscillatory, or slope-limited linear interpolation schemes can be handily adopted. A characteristic decomposition-free version of the scheme is also illustrated. The solenoidal condition of the magnetic field is enforced by augmenting the equations with a generalized Lagrange multiplier providing propagation and damping of divergence errors through a mixed hyperbolic/parabolic explicit cleaning step. Among the novel features, we describe an extension of the scheme to include non-ideal dissipative processes, such as viscosity, resistivity, and anisotropic thermal conduction without operator splitting. Finally, we illustrate an efficient treatment of point-local, potentially stiff source terms over hierarchical nested grids by taking advantage of the adaptivity in time. Several multidimensional benchmarks and applications to problems of astrophysical relevance assess the potentiality of the AMR version of PLUTO in resolving flow features separated by large spatial and temporal disparities.

• OSTI ID: 22047227
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 198; ISSN 0067-0049; ISSN APJSA2
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
ANISOTROPY
ASTROPHYSICS
BENCHMARKS
CALCULATION METHODS
DAMPING
ERRORS
INTERPOLATION
MAGNETIC FIELDS
MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMICS
P CODES
RELATIVISTIC RANGE
SOURCE TERMS
THERMAL CONDUCTION
VISCOSITY