[Sci-all-l] Physics and Astronomy Colloquium

[Luc Peterson]

Come to the first Physics and Astronomy Colloquium of the year!
Monday, September 12 in Sanders Physics Auditorium, Room 207.
Tea and cookies at 3:15 pm
Talk begins at 3:30 pm

The first in our series of student summer research presentations...


"The Elephant in the Room"
  A Novel Implementation of Massively Parallel Three Dimensional  
Monte Carlo Radiation Transport

Luc Peterson and Peter Robinson
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The goal of our summer project was to implement the difference  
formulation for radiation transport into Cosmos++, a  
multidimensional, massively parallel, magneto hydrodynamics code for  
astrophysical applications (Peter Anninos – AX).  The difference  
formulation is a new method for Symbolic Implicit Monte Carlo thermal  
transport (Brooks and Szöke – PAT). Formerly, simultaneous  
implementation of fully implicit Monte Carlo radiation transport in  
multiple dimensions on multiple processors had not been convincingly  
demonstrated. We found that a combination of the difference  
formulation and the inherent structure of Cosmos++ makes such an  
implementation both accurate and straightforward. We developed a  
“nearly nearest neighbor physics” technique to allow each processor  
to work independently, even with a fully implicit code. This  
technique coupled with the increased accuracy of an implicit Monte  
Carlo solution and the efficiency of parallel computing systems  
allows us to demonstrate the possibility of massively parallel  
thermal transport.

Again, that's Monday September 12, 3:15 pm, Sanders Physics 207.

Hope to see you there!

-The Physics and Astronomy Majors' Committee