A New Simulation Technique for Study of Collisionless Shocks: Self-Adaptive Simulations

The traditional technique for simulating physical systems modeled by partial differential equations is by means of time-stepping methodology where the state of the system is updated at regular discrete time intervals. This method has inherent inefficiencies. In contrast to this methodology, we have developed a new asynchronous type of simulation based on a discrete-event-driven (as opposed to time-driven) approach, where the simulation state is updated on a "need-to-be-done-only" basis. Here we report on this new technique, show an example of particle acceleration in a fast magnetosonic shockwave, and briefly discuss additional issues that we are addressing concerning algorithm development and parallel execution.