Science Vignettes
Cutting Edge Simulations of Lasers Interacting With Dense Plasmas
Intense laser pulses can quickly deposit large amounts of energy into solid materials, thus creating dense plasmas and subjecting matter to extreme temperature and pressure. This is useful in a variety of scientific applications, such as laboratory astrophysics, accelerating particles to high energies over short distances, or generating light pulses lasting just attoseconds. Read More »
Vulnerability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
A team led from Berkeley Lab used a highly-resolved model of the Antarctic Ice Sheet to systematically examine vulnerability to regional collapse of its floating ice shelves and the resulting potential for large contributions to sea level rise (SLR). Read More »
Exploring the High-Pressure Materials Genome
Researchers at Northwestern University developed a novel computational framework that runs on NERSC’s Cori supercomputer to rapidly explore apparent paradox of material phases that exist in nature that should be unstable according to calculations that assume idealized conditions of zero pressure and zero temperature. Using this method, the stability of these material phases is better understood, and the team has identified several new intermetallic high-pressure phases that can be realized with existing experimental techniques. Read More »
DOE Models Simulate Antarctic Ice Sheet Evolution
Ice sheet models developed under a DOE SciDAC project and run at NERSC have contributed to three international model intercomparison projects focused on assessing the future evolution of the Antarctic ice sheet. Read More »
ATLAS Experiment: Scaling High Throughput Workflows
Researchers from the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC ) used NERSC’s Cori supercomputer to simulate over 250 million proton collisions in support of the experiment’s data analysis efforts. This campaign also paves the way for even larger analysis that will be needed following a 2025 LHC upgrade. Read More »