EGU23-7235
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-7235
EGU General Assembly 2023
© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Towards a GPU based particle model for streamer discharges

Elloïse Fangel-Lloyd1, Saša Dujko2, Sven Karlsson3, Matthias Gammelmark3, Anton Rydahl3, Kenishi Nishikawa4, and Christoph Köhn1
Elloïse Fangel-Lloyd et al.
  • 1Technical University of Denmark, National Space Institute, Astrophyiscs and Atmospheric Physics, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark (eljens@space.dtu.dk)
  • 2Institute of Physics, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
  • 3DTU Compute, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark
  • 4Department of Physics, Alabama A&M University, Normal, AL 35762, United States of America

Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), bursts of X- and gamma-rays, are emitted from thunderstorms and are produced through relativistic electrons through the Bremsstrahlung process. Despite recent progress through measurements and simulations, the specific mechanism of electron acceleration remains unknown. As the processes inside thunderclouds occur on a multiscale level, we need to develop models that cover a wide range of temporal and spatial scales. As a first step, we here present a GPU based Monte Carlo particle-in-cell code to simulate electron avalanches and streamers, benchmarked against existing particle models. We will present this benchmarking as well as details on the GPU-code implementation as well as first results of electron avalanches and streamers and compare runtimes with previous models. This code will form the basis for a fully hybrid code running on the newest generation of pre-exascale computers. In the future, such a code will allow us to gain insight on the mechanisms responsible for TGFs.

How to cite: Fangel-Lloyd, E., Dujko, S., Karlsson, S., Gammelmark, M., Rydahl, A., Nishikawa, K., and Köhn, C.: Towards a GPU based particle model for streamer discharges, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-7235, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-7235, 2023.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material file