Acquisition of a Dedicated Cluster for Particle-in-cell Simulations of Plasmas at UCLA

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

This MRI award is to build a 256 node (512 CPU) Linux cluster to perform a variety of particle-in-cell(PIC) plasma simulations. The dedicated cluster will be used to study problems in micro-turbulence, plasma based acceleration, magnetic reconnection and other non-linear plasma wave phenomena. The UCLA group has been a world leader in developing the PIC techniques and codes to perform these simulations on single processors and more importantly, on large-scale, parallel computers. The computer cluster will enable the UCLA group to carry out the plasma simulations rapidly enough to have the needed impact on the design of compact plasma accelerators for high-energy physics experiments at SLAC.