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| News |
| New SciDAC Project |
| Community Petascale Accelerator Science & Simulation |
| SciDAC now includes the "Community Petascale Project for Accelerator Science and Simulation (ComPASS)." The project for accelerator modeling and research is led by PI Dr. Panagiotis Spentzouris of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) and encompasses researchers from leading institutions across the country. Simulation and computational studies of accelerator design, development, and operation are crucial to the success of all basic and applied science involving accelerators. The ComPASS project will develop a comprehensive computational infrastructure for accelerator modeling and optimization. Its goals include advancing accelerator computational capabilities from the terascale to the petascale to support DOE priorities for the next decade and beyond. Because accelerators comprise about half of the facilities in the DOE twenty-year outlook on Facilities for the Future of Science, computationally intensive research ensuring their success is important for national scientific progress. |
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| Figure 4. Visualization of electrons and generated wake fields in a Tesla cavity. |
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| Accelerators allow scientific discovery in the form of insights into the underlying structure of matter and the Universe. Research in high-energy particle and nuclear physics relies heavily on large particle accelerators—often considered "Big Science" because of the large machines and large collaborations involved. The science includes exploring physics beyond the Standard Model, discovering new and unknown particles, researching fundamental problems like charge–parity violation, and understanding new states of matter and their roles in the early Universe. Accelerators also play an important role in many other research areas including chemistry, nanoscience, biology, and applications for medical and physical sciences ("Designing Accelerators: Precision Probes for Scientific Discovery," SciDAC Review, Spring 2006, p12). |
| The ComPASS project will enhance the suite of parallel accelerator simulation tools developed under its predecessor, the SciDAC-1 project "Accelerator Science & Technology." Thus, ComPASS will provide interoperable, petascale components for beam dynamics, electromagnetics, electron cooling, and advanced accelerator modeling. Beam dynamics studies will include developing an understanding of the lifetime limits from beam collisions in collider machines. Electromagnetic modeling will be used to optimize cavity shapes for increased accelerating gradient and beam current. Electron cooling computations will determine the configuration of cooling systems needed for mitigating beam-beam effects. Advanced accelerator modeling is needed to develop concepts for high-energy physics accelerators beyond the International Linear Collider (ILC), and to develop tabletop electron accelerators for Basic Energy Sciences (BES) and Nuclear Physics (NP) projects. |
In each of these areas, the modeling tools require petascale supercomputers and advanced software for making effective use of these large, parallel platforms. Computational infrastructure to be used and advanced includes the areas of shape determination and optimization; advanced adaptive meshing; dynamic load balancing; embedded boundaries; component methodologies; performance measurement, assessment and improvement; linear and nonlinear solvers; and visualization (figure 4). Consequently, the embedded collaborations within the applied mathematics and computer science communities are critical to making high-quality computational tools available to the U.S. particle accelerator community through installation at government laboratories, universities, and industry. The enhanced simulation suite will be applied to numerous important DOE accelerator projects.
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Further Reading:
https://compass.fnal.gov/ |
