Here are some examples of astrocomputing research groups within the UC-HIPACC consortium.
There is a large group of computational astrophysicists at UC Santa Cruz, including Eric Asphaug, Gary Glatzmaier, and Francis Nimmo (Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences) and Nic Brummell and Pascale Garaud (Applied Math), who work on solar and planetary physics; Jonathan Fortney, Greg Laughlin, Douglas Lin, and Adriane Steinacker (Astronomy), stars and planetary systems; Mark Krumholz (Astronomy), star formation; Enrico Ramirez-Ruis and Stan Woosley (Astronomy), compact objects and supernovae; and Piero Madau (Astronomy) and Anthony Aguirre, Joel Primack, and Stefano Profumo (Physics), cosmology, galaxy formation, and high-energy astrophysics. Primack’s postdoc Patrik Jonsson developed the Sunrise code to generate images of simulated galaxies, including scattering, absorption, and re-emission by dust. UCSC is the UCO/Lick headquarters, and many UCSC observational astronomers, including UC-HIPACC co-I Sandra Faber, are involved in computational astrophysics. In addition, several Physics faculty are involved in gamma ray astronomy with the Fermi spacecraft and the VERITAS array of atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes. There are more than 20 UCSC postdocs in related areas. UCSC also has an 800+ processor mini- supercomputer for astrophysics, which is used by both theorists and observers.
The UC Irvine Center for Cosmology hosts 21 full-time faculty members with interests that range from theoretical particle physics in the early universe to astronomical observations of high-redshift galaxies, to understanding the formation of the Milky Way galaxy. Three Center for Cosmology faculty members (UC-HIPACC co-I Bullock, Cooray, and Kaplinghat) and ten to fifteen postdoctoral researchers and graduate students per year are actively involved in high-performance computer simulations to study the assembly of galaxies and galaxy interactions, to analyze large data sets in order to measure the clustering of galaxies in the early universe, and to study the large-scale clustering properties of different types of dark matter candidates. The astrophysics group at Irvine also interacts frequently with Wayne Hayes from the Computer Science Department at UC Irvine.
At UC Merced, Wil van Breugel studies distant massive galaxies, Lilian Davila interstellar dust, HIOACC co-I Michael Sprague astrophysical fluid dynamics and high-performance computing, and Mayya Tokman computational science especially applied to plasma physics. The UC Merced graduate program in applied mathematics focuses on scientific computing, and they say that UC-HIPACC will have a strong and lasting impact on success at this newest UC campus.
The UC San Diego Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics (LCA), directed by UC-HIPACC co-I Michael Norman, is currently developing the adaptive mesh refinement hydrodynamic cosmology code ENZO for petascale platforms. Research applications are being made to precision simulations of the Lyman alpha forest, the formation and evolution of the first galaxies, and cosmic reionization. The LCA is also active in the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) Theory Data Working Group, and is developing access protocols for astrophysical simulation data. Other UCSD computational astrophysicists include Paolo Padoan, Aleixi Kritsuk, and several postdocs and other staff.
UC Santa Barbara computational astrophysicists include Omer Blaes (MHD and accretion disks) and UC-HIPACC co-I S. Peng Oh (simulations of the first stars and the intergalactic medium).
The focus at UC Riverside is on observational astronomy, including galaxy formation and evolution. They say that the regular UC-HIPACC workshops, conferences, and summer schools will be of particular value to the students and postdocs at UC Riverside.
UC Los Angeles co-I Steve Furlanetto focuses on the formation of the first galaxies in the universe, research that is particularly relevant to NASA James Webb Space Telescope and to the Thirty Meter Telescope. Other faculty at UCLA, including both theoretical and observational astronomers, use high-performance computing to study areas from planet formation and the dynamics of the solar system to supermassive black holes.
At UC Berkeley, computational astrophysicists associated with UC-HIPACC include Richard Klein and UC-HIPACC co-I Chris McKee, who are working on star formation, and cosmologists Chung-Pei Ma and Martin White. White is involved in major collaborations with LANL; there are also collaborations with LBNL.
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Physics and Computational Research Divisions have formed the Computational Cosmology Center (C3), a focused collaboration of astrophysicists and computational scientists whose goals are to develop the tools, techniques and technologies to meet the analysis challenges posed by present and future cosmological data sets including the Planck and JDEM satellite missions, which will gather data sets so massive that their analysis requires leading-edge high performance computing resources. Among the senior people involved in these efforts are computational astrophysicists Julian Borrill and UC-HIPACC co-I Peter Nugent, computational scientists John Bell and Phil Colella, and observational cosmologists David Schlegel and Saul Perlmutter.
Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have a long history in cutting-edge supercomputing. LANL astrophysical and cosmological simulations cover areas such as the large scale structure of the universe, cosmological hydrodynamics, astro-MHD simulations, stellar astrophysics including simulations of supernova explosions and light curves, nuclear astrophysics, simulations of the first stars, planet formation, space plasma simulations, the Lyman-alpha forest, and the epoch of reionization. Observational areas include astrophysical transients, high-energy astrophysics, X-ray astronomy, optical surveys, space exploration, and radio astronomy. LANL people involve in this include Chris Fryer, UC-HIPACC co-I Salman Habib, Katrin Heitmann, and Mike Warren; LLNL people include UC-HIPACC co-I Peter Anninos, Rob Hoffman, Stephen Murray, and Jay Salmonson.