PICKSC

On September 18 to 20, the first annual OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop was held at UCLA. The aims of the workshop were to introduce users to the new features and design of our plasma simulation code OSIRIS 4.0, to allow OSIRIS users to share experiences and discuss best practices, to identify useful test and demonstration problems, to discuss how to transition from being a user to an active developer, and to identify areas for near term software improvements and a community strategy for carrying out necessary developments.

There were over 60 attendees from the U.S., Europe, and Asia, with widely ranging experiences and expertise. It was a great success, with many discussions and new collaborations and friendships.

The agenda, as well as copies of many of the talks, can be found on our Presentations page. A summary of the workshop will be posted soon.

The OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop will be held annually and alternate between IST in Portugal and UCLA in the U.S. With an active and growing user base that includes over 25 research groups and over 100 users worldwide, the continued success of OSIRIS will benefit greatly from maintaining active community engagement and involvement. Not only is OSIRIS a premiere particle-in-cell simulation tool, it is also a continuously evolving and very complex piece of software. We recognize that it is essential to communicate effectively with our user base and to develop tools which allow us to effectively manage feature development, code dissemination, and code documentation.

If you are interested in becoming a part of the OSIRIS community as a user and/or developer please contact us at picksc.org@gmail.com.

The UCLA Particle-in-Cell and Kinetic Simulation Center (http://picksc.idre.ucla.edu) and the IST Extreme Plasma Physics Team in Portugal (http://epp.tecnico.ulisboa.pt) are pleased to announce the first annual OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop. The location will alternate between UCLA and IST with the first workshop to be held at UCLA September 18-20. This meeting is open to all who have gained access to or are interested in gaining access to the OSIRIS source code and data analysis tools through an MoU between either UCLA or IST.

The goals of the workshop are:

1. To introduce users to the new features and design of OSIRIS 4.0.
2. To allow users of OSIRIS to share experiences and discuss best practices.
3. To identify useful test and demonstration problems.
4. To discuss how to transition from being a user to an active developer.
5. Identify areas for near term software improvements and a community strategy for carrying out the necessary development.

If you are interested in attending this workshop or in getting access to OSIRIS please contact picksc.org@gmail.com.

OSIRIS is a state-of-the-art massively parallel relativistic particle-in-cell code that is now being used by roughly 100 users worldwide through more than 25 MoUs with UCLA or IST. OSIRIS results have been featured or included in 100’s of publications in journals such as Nature, Nature Physics, Physical Review Letters, and Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Over the past 20 years, the development of OSIRIS at UCLA has been partially supported by NSF, DOE, and LLNL, and at IST has been supported by the European Research Council, the Portuguese National Science Foundation (FCT), and the European Space Agency.

PICKSC members recently attended the 17th Advanced Accelerator Concepts (AAC) Workshop held at the National Harbor in Washington DC between July 31 and August 5. Copies of the presentations have not been posted. The PI of PICKSC received the AAC prize “for his leadership and pioneering contributions to the theory and particle-in-cell simulations of plasma based acceleration”. In addition, a PICKSC visiting student from IST in Portugal, Diana Amorim, received a best poster prize for her presentation, “Transverse evolution of positron beams accelerating in hollow plasma channel non-linear wakefields.”

Viktor Decyk has developed fully 3D versions of skeleton PIC codes illustrating the hybrid parallel algorithmic techniques for utilizing both OpenMP and MPI.  These skeleton codes have recently been benchmarked on the Edison machine at NERSC.

For the electromagnetic code on a problem size of 1024^3 grids with 27 particles/cell, one can see good scaling up to nearly 100,000 cores, nearly the entire Edison machine. There are 10 FFTs per time step, and the particle time gives about 2 psec/particle/time step at 98,304 cores.

Electrostatic, electromagnetic, and Darwin versions are available.  These codes may be accessed here on the OpenMP/MPI skeleton code subpage or at our GitHub repository for skeleton codes.

A new video has been produced that highlights activities at The Plasma Science and Technology Institute at UCLA.  This Institute consists of affiliated laboratories and research groups that investigate fundamental questions related plasmas, and it includes the research activities performed by PICKSC scientists.

The areas of study include basic plasma physics, fusion research, space plasmas, laser-plasma interactions, advanced accelerators, novel radiation sources, and plasma-materials processing. Diverse programs encompass experimentation, theory, and computer simulation.

The video may be seen here.

NSF has highlighted research done by QuickPIC for the FACET simulations.  See link here.

Breakthrough in plasma-based accelerator research is facilitated using QuickPIC, a code based on the UPIC Framework. Recently, a team of researchers from SLAC and UCLA demonstrated a milestone in plasma based accelerator research. Using two properly space electron bunches, they were able to demonstrate efficient transfer of energy from a drive electron beam to a second trailing electron beam. The planning and interpretation of the experiment relied on QuickPIC as well as OSIRIS.

Nature article:  M. Litos et al., Nature 515, 92 (2014)  |  General science write-up in Nature News and Views:  Accelerator physics: Surf’s up at SLAC  |  More links...