LowCollICM · Unraveling effects of anisotropy from low collisionality in the intracluster medium
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-10-01 → 2023-12-30
- EU contribution
- €174,806
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Unraveling effects of anisotropy from low collisionality in the intracluster medium
Despite advances in both instrumental and computational capabilities, there still exists a mismatch between the observations of and theory describing galaxy clusters – the most massive gravitationally bound objects in the Universe. Galaxy clusters are used as probes for cosmological models and thus are important to our fundamental understanding of the Universe. Some differences clearly originate from an incorrect treatment of microphysical processes in large-scale cosmological simulations. This applies, in particular, to the intracluster medium (ICM), which is typically treated as a fully collisional fluid with an isotropic pressure. The overall physics-related objective of the action was to determine key observational effects that stem from low collisionality and the resulting anisotropic pressure in the ICM. In addition to the astrophysical implications, the changing high performance computing landscape is also requiring a fundamental shift in the way scientific computing applications are designed, developed and used. While standard supercomputers in the past decades used a common architecture (x86 CPUs) and were built using an ever-increasing number of homogeneous nodes, the next generation of exascale supercomputers will use heterogeneous nodes and varying architectures between supercomputers. Thus, the traditional scale up and/or out approach does not translate to exascale supercomputers capable of performing 10^{18} floating point operations per second as hardware-specific programming models differ between exascale supercomputers. The overall technical objective was to determine how to efficiently leverage next-generation, exascale supercomputers for astrophysical simulations. Finally, the overall training objective was for the researcher to become more independent and prepare for the duties of a research group leader.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Despite advances in both instrumental and computational capabilities, there still exists a mismatch between the observations of and theory describing galaxy clusters – the most massive gravitationally bound objects in the Universe. Galaxy clusters are used as probes for cosmological models and thus are important to our fundamental understanding of the Universe. Some differences clearly originate from an incorrect treatment of microphysical processes in large-scale cosmological simulations. This applies, in particular, to the intracluster medium (ICM). Particle collisions are rare in this hot, diffuse, magnetized plasma. In simulations the ICM is typically treated as a fully collisional fluid with an isotropic pressure. Hence, small-scale physics that stem, for example, from an anisotropic pressure, are missing. With this action the researcher will pave the way for the development of a model that allows for the incorporation of these small-scale effects into large-scale cosmological simulations. To achieve this, the researcher will implement anisotropic viscosity and thermal conduction in a next-generation, exascale simulation code. This code will then be used to conduct and analyze simulations of different aspects of the ICM covering both idealized, turbulent subvolumes and global isolated galaxy clusters. In doing so, the researcher will determine which effects are dynamically important, how they affect observables such as Faraday rotation measures and surface brightness discontinuities, and how to model them. Ultimately, future cosmological simulations employing a more accurate model will facilitate a more fundamental understanding of the magnetized Universe.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF HAMBURG · HamburgCoordinatorGermany
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union