Liang Wang, PhD - US grants

This project advances the frontiers of global simulations of space and laboratory plasma systems, and makes these advances accessible to a broad community of users. The plasma states in such systems are often in weakly collisional regimes where traditional fluid models break down. To describe such systems, the project team is developing Gkeyll, a multi-fluid, multi-moment model that incorporates important kinetic effects. The model can be used for high-fidelity and accurate predictions for space weather events, and for the design and study of laboratory experiments engaged in discovery plasma science. The project will develop comprehensive cyberinfrastructure (CI) to support professional scientists in the execution of space weather and basic plasma physics simulations over a wide variety of computing platforms from local clusters to high-performance computing facilities. Gkeyll CI to be developed includes (1) providing web-based user interfaces for defining, executing, and managing simulations, (2) workflows consisting of of pre-defined sequences of tasks, and (3) user-friendly tools that implement the workflow tasks. Gkeyll science will be facilitated by algorithmic advances. Gkeyll is open-source and provides the space and laboratory plasma science communities with a modern and versatile software ecosystem. The project team is strongly interdisciplinary, including space and laboratory plasma scientists, applied mathematicians, computer scientists and software engineers, and the project will promote diversity in professional training and education.<br/><br/>The CI to be built in the project is centered on the Gkeyll framework that consists of advanced plasma simulation models, tools, and automated continuous integration of new software. The project will provide a uniform and complete open-source solution with workflow control to model plasma systems from terrestrial magnetospheres to laboratory experiments in collisionless or weakly collisional plasma regimes, which are essential for space weather and laboratory plasma experiments. The project will extend and enhance the core algorithms in Gkeyll and integrate the software with the NSF Science Gateway Platform as a Service (SciGaP). Gkeyll science is facilitated by core modeling and PDE discretization advances, including automated and adaptive gridding for relevant sets of parameterized geometries that are properly matched to the equation discretization methods. The project will employ modern software engineering practices to produce scalable, secure, and high-fidelity physics-based software.<br/><br/>This award by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the Division of Physics within the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences and the Division of Research, Innovation, Synergies, and Education within the NSF Directorate for Geosciences.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.