Abstract:
VPIC -- a first-principles 3d electromagnetic charge-conserving
relativistic kinetic particle-in-cell code, was recently adapted to
run on Los Alamos's Roadrunner, the first super-computer to break a
petaflop (quadrillion floating point operations per second) in the
TOP500 super-computer performance rankings. We summarize VPIC's
modeling capabilities, VPIC's optimization techniques and Roadrunner's
computational characteristics. We 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 space and laboratory plasmas