Title:	Astrophysical turbulence and dynamo action
DNr:	NAISS 2024/3-6
Project Type:	NAISS Large Compute
Principal Investigator:	Axel Brandenburg <brandenb@nordita.org>
Affiliation:	NORDITA
Duration:	2025-01-01 – 2026-01-01
Classification:	10305 10303
Homepage:	http://www.nordita.org/~brandenb/AstroDyn/
Keywords:

Abstract

As an significant effort at Nordita, we have developed a novel high-performance computing framework to enable such simulations, called Runko. Within this framework, we perform simulations of astrophysical turbulence and shocks to investigate the microphysics of particle acceleration, a physical phenomenon where kinetic plasma processes accelerate charged particles up to ultra-relativistic velocities. This activity will mainly be persued by Camilia Demidem, a new postdoc at Nordita. Another new astrophysics activity at Nordita focusses on the calculation of the stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background. Specifically, we determine, using numerical simulations and analytical approach, the strengths of the resulting GW field at the present time for a range of GW sources associated with turbulent stresses in the energy-momentum tensor. This activity on gravitational waves will now primarily be persued by a new PhD student at Nordita (Yutong He, supervised by Axel Brandenburg). For those calculations we use the Pencil Code. The strengths of the resulting GW field at the present time for a range of GW sources associated with turbulent stresses in the energy-momentum tensor. This activity is supported by a VR grant on "Stochastic Gravitational Wave Background from the Early Turbulent Universe". The allocation must also partially support the activity of the rest of the Nordita group. Another activity concerns global accretion disk simulations by Patryk Pjanka, a new Nordita fellow who did his PhD with Jim Stone at Princeton University.