Acquisition of a High Performance Computing Cluster for the Geophysics Group at New Mexico State University

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces NM

Investigators

Abstract

This award will support the acquisition of a High Performance Computer (HPC) cluster for the Geophysics group at New Mexico State University (NMSU), and will benefit a range of geophysical, material, and solar research. NMSU is identified as a Hispanic Serving Institution, and approximately half of enrolled students are of Hispanic origin. The cluster will add new teaching opportunities in computational modeling, leading to better professional preparation of undergraduate and graduate students, as well as training the future generation of geoscientists. The work supported by this project will also facilitate redeveloping a new Geophysics curriculum. Research will model the structure, composition, and processes of Earth's surface and interior; highly complex problems requiring computationally intensive analysis. Planned projects include inversions to obtain models of Earth structures, calculations for synthetic data, and computational mineral physics calculations to explore the crystal structure of Earth and geo-inspired materials. The research is well aligned with the NSF mission to promote the progress of science via advancing our knowledge of our planet and the sun. New models of Earth's structure inform regarding potential earthquake hazard, and the novel ground motion modeling techniques employed here also benefit nuclear monitoring. Geo-inspired materials design will address technological solutions to societal challenges, with impact across engineering and material science disciplines. Further research that will benefit from the HPC includes the structure of the sun and other planets, providing numerous multidisciplinary opportunities. The seismic properties of Earth's interior are highly heterogeneous across multiple length scales. The structures must be constrained as accurately as possible in order to understand the underlying geodynamical processes and material composition. This necessitates various geophysical methodologies which require parallel computing, including waveform inversions for seismic velocity, anisotropy, and attenuation structure, forward modeling of full seismic waveforms using 3D Earth models, and calculations of earthquake and nuclear explosion ground motion. The resultant highly detailed seismic models will provide essential information for the next generation of geodynamical simulations, and mineral physics studies, as well as implications for earthquake hazard and nuclear monitoring. The massive quantities of seismic data utilized in our projects also entail highly computationally intensive processing methods, such as waveform correlations and modeling, stacking of real and synthetic array data, and large error calculations. In addition to modeling crystal structures within Earth, the computational mineral physics calculations will explore novel geo-inspired technological materials with applications to material science, engineering, and condensed matter physics. Solar physics research into interior plasma flows that transport magnetic flux through the star is crucial for understanding the solar dynamo. This new cluster facility will also benefit studies of the solar atmosphere, especially the solar flare prediction, which can drastically affect the communication satellites and electronics equipment on Earth.