Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Advances in petascale kinetic plasma simulation with VPIC and Roadrunner

Journal Article ·

VPIC, a first-principles 3d electromagnetic charge-conserving relativistic kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) code, was recently adapted to run on Los Alamos's Roadrunner, the first supercomputer to break a petaflop (10{sup 15} floating point operations per second) in the TOP500 supercomputer performance rankings. They give a brief overview of the modeling capabilities and optimization techniques used in VPIC and the computational characteristics of petascale supercomputers like Roadrunner. They then discuss three applications enabled by VPIC's unprecedented performance on Roadrunner: modeling laser plasma interaction in upcoming inertial confinement fusion experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), modeling short pulse laser GeV ion acceleration and modeling reconnection in magnetic confinement fusion experiments.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
Sponsoring Organization:
DOE
DOE Contract Number:
AC52-06NA25396
OSTI ID:
989793
Report Number(s):
LA-UR-09-03524; LA-UR-09-3524
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (30)

Parametric instabilities of electromagnetic waves in plasmas journal January 1974
Nonlinear saturation of stimulated Raman scattering in laser hot spots journal April 1999
Laser acceleration of quasi-monoenergetic MeV ion beams journal January 2006
Accelerating a Particle-in-Cell Simulation Using a Hybrid Counting Sort journal November 2001
Electron, photon, and ion beams from the relativistic interaction of Petawatt laser pulses with solid targets journal May 2000
Langmuir wave self-focusing versus decay instability journal January 2005
Fully kinetic simulations of undriven magnetic reconnection with open boundary conditions journal July 2006
Radiation pressure acceleration of thin foils with circularly polarized laser pulses journal January 2008
Absorbing Boundary Conditions for Difference Approximations to the Multi-Dimensional Wave Equation journal October 1986
Saturation of Backward Stimulated Scattering of a Laser Beam in the Kinetic Regime journal December 2007
Relativistic Buneman instability in the laser breakout afterburner journal September 2007
3-D ICEPIC simulations of the relativistic klystron oscillator journal June 2000
Ultrahigh performance three-dimensional electromagnetic relativistic kinetic plasma simulation journal May 2008
A method for incorporating Gauss' law into electromagnetic PIC codes journal January 1987
Two-dimensional fully kinetic simulations of driven magnetic reconnection with boundary conditions relevant to the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment journal October 2008
Recent Trident single hot spot experiments: Evidence for kinetic effects, and observation of Langmuir decay instability cascade journal May 2002
Forward Ion Acceleration in Thin Films Driven by a High-Intensity Laser journal May 2000
Theory of Laser Acceleration of Light-Ion Beams from Interaction of Ultrahigh-Intensity Lasers with Layered Targets journal September 2006
Introduction to the Cell multiprocessor journal July 2005
Magnetically dominated jets inside collapsing stars as a model for gamma-ray bursts and supernova explosions journal May 2007
Langmuir wave filamentation instability journal January 2008
Body-fitted electromagnetic PIC software for use on parallel computers journal May 1995
Particle-in-cell studies of laser-driven hot spots and a statistical model for mesoscopic properties of Raman backscatter journal June 2006
Saturation of backward stimulated scattering of laser in kinetic regime: Wavefront bowing, trapped particle modulational instability, and trapped particle self-focusing of plasma waves journal January 2008
GeV laser ion acceleration from ultrathin targets: The laser break-out afterburner journal June 2006
A binary collision model for plasma simulation with a particle code journal November 1977
Small-angle Coulomb collision model for particle-in-cell simulations journal March 2009
Three-Dimensional Dynamics of Collisionless Magnetic Reconnection in Large-Scale Pair Plasmas journal September 2008
Nonlinear backward stimulated Raman scattering from electron beam acoustic modes in the kinetic regime journal July 2006
Rigorous charge conservation for local electromagnetic field solvers journal March 1992

Similar Records

Ultrahigh performance three-dimensional electromagnetic relativistic kinetic plasma simulation
Journal Article · Thu May 15 00:00:00 EDT 2008 · Physics of Plasmas · OSTI ID:21120342

Roadrunner Supercomputer Breaks the Petaflop Barrier
Multimedia · Mon Jun 09 00:00:00 EDT 2008 · OSTI ID:987139

Trainblazing with roadrunner
Journal Article · Wed Dec 31 23:00:00 EST 2008 · Computing in Science and Engineering · OSTI ID:956426