Hybrid Adaptive Ray-Moment Method (HARM2): A highly parallel method for radiation hydrodynamics on adaptive grids

• Published in: Journal of computational physics Vol. 330; no. C; pp. 924 - 942
• Main Authors: Rosen, A.L., Krumholz, M.R., Oishi, J.S., Lee, A.T., Klein, R.I.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Elsevier Inc 01-02-2017; Elsevier Science Ltd; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adaptive algorithms; Adaptive mesh refinement; Computational physics; Diffuse radiation; Distributed memory; Distributed processing; Fluid dynamics; Fluid flow; Fluid mechanics; Fluids; Hydrodynamics; Long characteristics; Numerical analysis; Parallelization; Point sources; Radiative transfer; Hydrodynamics; Radiative transfer; Adaptive mesh refinement; Long characteristics; Parallelization
• ISSN: 0021-9991; 1090-2716
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jcp.2016.10.048

We present a highly-parallel multi-frequency hybrid radiation hydrodynamics algorithm that combines a spatially-adaptive long characteristics method for the radiation field from point sources with a moment method that handles the diffuse radiation field produced by a volume-filling fluid. Our Hybrid Adaptive Ray-Moment Method (HARM2) operates on patch-based adaptive grids, is compatible with asynchronous time stepping, and works with any moment method. In comparison to previous long characteristics methods, we have greatly improved the parallel performance of the adaptive long-characteristics method by developing a new completely asynchronous and non-blocking communication algorithm. As a result of this improvement, our implementation achieves near-perfect scaling up to O(103) processors on distributed memory machines. We present a series of tests to demonstrate the accuracy and performance of the method.