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| Project Title | Petascale MD Visualization of Acoustic Metrics |
| Summary | The student intern will assist mathematics, computer science and physics faculty in molecular dynamics simulations, visualizations and acoustic metric analyses of sound waves in hexagonal and fcc lattices. LAMMPS, ParaView and C code development and testing will occur on a local Linux cluster before large-scale production runs on OSC's Oakley and NCSA's Blue Waters. |
| Job Description | The ongoing research analyzes temperature and pressure dependence of sound wave velocities and frequency spectra in highly symmetric, classical lattices, from which are derived effective/acoustic metrics. Petascale parallel processing will aid analysis over a large parameter space of varied temperatures, pressures, and interatomic potentials, with the goal of reverse-engineering effective metrics of interest to researchers in analog models of gravity. In this 2014-15 internship, the student will extend previous LAMMPS and C code for analyzing Lennard-Jones lattices, to permit analysis of a broader class of radial-dependent interatomic potentials. Some pre- and post-processing will employ the Pizza.py toolkit written in Python. The final phase of the work will expose the intern to alternate molecular dynamics and visualization tools (NAMD and VMD) and related MD simulations of interest for research in acoustic metrics and analog gravity (e.g., defect dynamics in lattices with induced acoustic standing waves). While the project employs classical molecular dynamics to advance research in mathematical and theoretical physics, the purpose of the internship is broader. Through exposure to visualization tools, parallel algorithms and core concepts of solid-state physics, the intern will also gain a foundation for research in materials science & engineering. |
| Conditions/Qualifications | Preference given to undergraduates at Bluffton University. Must have a strong background or demonstrated ability in mathematics or computer programming, core knowledge in physics, and basic knowledge of C, FORTRAN or Python. Candidates should have the ability or motivation for self-directed code adaptation, and maturity conducive to self-directed as well as collaborative research. Available on location for full-time internship in summer 2014, plus additional work (on location or remote) for the combined total of a 4-month full-time internship spread over one year. |
| Start Date | 05/05/2014 |
| End Date | 05/30/2015 |
| Location | Bluffton University Bluffton, Ohio Departments of Mathematics & Computer Science and Physics Division of Natural and Applied Sciences (Drs. Stephen Harnish, Michael Edmiston, Darryl Nester) |
| Interns | Daniel Piero
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