Distinguished Seminar in Computational Science and Engineering
November 21, 2024, 12-1PM
45-432 in Building 45 and Zoom Webinar
Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics at Exascale
James Stone
Professor, School of Natural Sciences,
Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton University
Abstract:
Most of the visible matter in the Universe is a plasma — that is a dilute gas of electrons, ions, and neutral particles — interacting with both magnetic and radiation fields. Studying the structure and dynamics of astrophysical systems, from stars and planets, to galaxies and the large-scale structure of the Universe itself, usually requires numerical methods to solve the coupled equations of compressible radiation magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). Robust numerical algorithms for modeling astrophysical fluids, including new methods for calculating radiation transport in relativistic flows, will be discussed. Efficient implementation of these methods on modern high-performance computing systems is crucial, and an approach based on the Kokkos programming model that enables performance portability will be described. Performance on a variety of architectures of a new adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) astrophysical MHD code will be given, including scaling on up to 65536 GPUs on the OLCF Frontier exascale computer. Finally, a case study will be presented that demonstrates some of the many new insights that have come from applying computational methods to one particular problem: how plasma accretes onto the black holes in the centers of galaxies.
Bio:
James Stone is a Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, NJ. He received a PhD in astronomy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1990, and held faculty appointments at the University of Maryland, Cambridge University, and Princeton University before moving to the IAS in 2019. Stone’s research interests are in the use of numerical methods to study the nonlinear and multidimensional fluid dynamics in a diverse range of astrophysical systems, from star and planet formation to accretion flows onto black holes. He has been awarded the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics by the APS, the Dirk Brouwer Award by the AAS, and the James Craig Watson medal of the NAS. He is a Fellow of the APS and AAS, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the NAS.
Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics at Exascale
James Stone
Professor, School of Natural Sciences,
Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton