Alumni Project

Terascale Computational Atomic Physics for the Edge Region in Controlled Fusion Plasmas

Enabled by access to the next generation of massively parallel supercomputers, the goals of the research will address key problems and produce new levels of quantitative knowledge regarding collisions involving electrons, atoms, atomic ions, molecules and molecular ions. Time-dependent close-coupling lattice calculations will be used to calculate the electron impact ionization of light atoms and electrons. The resulting coefficients are required for collisional modeling of edge plasmas. Another objective is to carry out time-dependent semi-classical lattice calculations for the proton-impact ionization and charge transfer with atoms. Calculations are planned for alpha-particle impact excitation of and charge transfer with Li and Na atoms and proton-impact ionization of hydrogen by using a direct projection onto the target electron continuum. The parallel codes that will be developed will provide a complete treatment of electron-impact excitation in complex atomic species thereby providing data for excitation of inert gases, data needed for diagnostics of edge plasmas.