Parallel computational magneto-fluid dynamics

In a Priority Program on Massively Parallel Computing, eight Dutch research groups (http://www.phys.uu.nl/~mpr/) cooperate since 1995 to develop new algorithms and software to simulate the non-linear dynamics of thermonuclear, geo-physical, and astrophysical plasmas. As one result of this collaboration, the general-purpose Versatile Advection Codemonstrated excellent scaling properties across a variety of shared and distributed memory architectures. VAC uses various shock capturing numerical methods with explicit, semi-implicit, or fully implicit time stepping, on 1, 2, or 3 dimensional nite volume grids. Porta-bility to diierent hardware platforms is achieved by preprocessors that can translate the code from Fortran 90 both forwards to High Performance Fortran and backwards to Fortran 77. With this code, we simulate complicated magnetized plasma phenomena where simultaneous large-scale and small-scale structures evolve on diierent timescales. We investigate fundamental hydromagnetic instabilities in multi-dimensional, fully non-linear regimes, as well as astrophysically oriented applications. An overview of recently investigated phenomena includes: the role of the magnetic eld in Rayleigh-Taylor and Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, stellar wind models and solar coronal mass ejections, and accretion ows onto compact objects (black holes).