Optimization of Particle-In-Cell simulations for Vlasov-Poisson system with strong magnetic field

Edwin Chacon-Golcher (1) , Sever Adrian Hirstoaga (2, 3) , Mathieu Lutz (3, 4)

1 Institute of Physics [Prague]
2 TONUS - TOkamaks and NUmerical Simulations
3 IRMA - Institut de Recherche Mathématique Avancée
4 IMT - Institut de Mathématiques de Toulouse UMR5219

We study the dynamics of charged particles under the influence of a strong magnetic field by numerically solving the Vlasov-Poisson and guiding center models. By using appropriate data structures, we implement an efficient (from the memory access point of view) particle-in-cell method which enables simulations with a large number of particles. We present numerical results for classical one-dimensional Landau damping and two-dimensional Kelvin-Helmholtz test cases. The implementation also relies on a standard hybrid MPI/OpenMP parallelization. Code performance is assessed by the observed speedup and attained memory bandwidth.

Domaines: Mathématiques [math]; Modélisation et simulation; Calcul parallèle, distribué et partagé [cs.DC]

Edwin Chacon-Golcher, Sever Adrian Hirstoaga, Mathieu Lutz. Optimization of Particle-In-Cell simulations for Vlasov-Poisson system with strong magnetic field. ESAIM: Proceedings and Surveys, 2016, CEMRACS 2014 - Numerical Modeling of Plasmas, 53, pp.177-190. ⟨10.1051/proc/201653011⟩. ⟨hal-01231444v2⟩