For the first time, this project will simulate the complex three-dimensional (3D) global kinetic interaction between the solar wind and the entire magnetosphere of Earth while maintaining true scales.
Due to its computational complexities, solving this problem using 3D kinetic (particle-based) models has been a long-standing challenge within the space physics community. To solve this, the project will use Amitis, a state-of-the-art 3D (in both configuration and velocity spaces), time-dependent hybrid-kinetic plasma model (particle ions, fluid electrons) that runs in parallel on Nvidia GPUs for efficient computation.
The simulations unveil, for the first time, the 3D kinetic nature of the solar wind interaction with Earth in its physics scales using a particle-based model. The focus will be on the physics of the bow shock, foreshock, and the dynamics of the magnetosheath jets under various solar wind configurations. To accomplish the project objectives, Amitis requires, on average, 16 Nvidia GPUs per simulation, like the A100 series on Leonardo-Booster. Amitis uses CUDA-aware-MPI for intranode communication, is highly optimised, directly contributed to 15 peer-reviewed publications, and validated against several spacecraft observations.
The project required access to the EuroHPC facilities because no supercomputer in Sweden is equipped with modern Nvidia GPUs and supports non-machine learning applications like ours.
Umeå University, Sweden.