Introducing ZEUS-MP: A 3D, Parallel, Multiphysics Code for Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics

TL;DR

ZEUS-MP is a new 3D, parallel astrophysical fluid dynamics code that extends previous versions with multi-physics modules and scalable performance for complex simulations.

Contribution

It introduces ZEUS-MP, a multi-physics, massively-parallel code for 3D astrophysical fluid dynamics, supporting various physics modules and scalable across platforms.

Findings

Parallel performance results demonstrate scalability.

Application to turbulent star formation showcases code capabilities.

Supports multiple coordinate systems and physics modules.

Abstract

We describe ZEUS-MP: a Multi-Physics, Massively-Parallel, Message-Passing code for astrophysical fluid dynamics simulations in 3 dimensions. ZEUS-MP is a follow-on to the sequential ZEUS-2D and ZEUS-3D codes developed and disseminated by the Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics (lca.ncsa.uiuc.edu) at NCSA. V1.0 released 1/1/2000 includes the following physics modules: ideal hydrodynamics, ideal MHD, and self-gravity. Future releases will include flux-limited radiation diffusion, thermal heat conduction, two-temperature plasma, and heating and cooling functions. The covariant equations are cast on a moving Eulerian grid with Cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical polar coordinates currently supported. Parallelization is done by domain decomposition and implemented in F77 and MPI. The code is portable across a wide range of platforms from networks of workstations to massively parallel processors. Some parallel performance results are presented as well as an application to turbulent star formation.