School of CSE Seminar Series: Luis Chacon

Speaker: Luis Chacón, senior scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Date and Time: October 11, 2:00-3:00 p.m.
Location: Coda 230
Host: Qi Tang

Title: Implicit HPC Algorithms for Multiscale Simulation of Fusion Plasmas

Abstract: The high-fidelity simulation of fusion plasmas is remarkably challenging due to scale disparity, nonlinearity, and model complexity. In general, fusion plasma models are stiff hyperbolic systems, potentially high dimensional (6D + time, due to the lack of thermal equilibrium), and inherently multiphysics and multiscale, with temporal and spatial scale separations of 7-10 orders of magnitude. Implicit methods hold promise to bridge the temporal gaps while enforcing both structure (e.g., conservation properties) and asymptotic consistency, but demand effective preconditioning and a scalable implementation in large HPC applications. In this talk, we will describe our progress in developing effective preconditioners for fluid (magnetohydrodynamics), collisionless kinetic (particle-based Vlasov), and collisional hybrid fluid-kinetic models, with emphasis on parallel scalability and suitability for heterogeneous computing, and applications to fusion systems.

Bio: Dr. Luis Chacón is a 2021 Ernest O. Lawrence Laureate, a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 2020, and a Senior Scientist in the Theoretical Division at LANL since 2012. Dr. Chacón received an MS degree in Industrial Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) in 1994, MS and PhD degrees in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1998 and 2000, respectively. He joined the Theoretical Division at LANL as a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow in 2000, becoming a Staff Member in 2002. Dr. Chacón later joined the Fusion Energy Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2008, returning to LANL in 2012. His research focuses on multiscale algorithm development for fluid and kinetic modeling of plasmas, with applications to basic plasmas, inertial confinement fusion, and magnetic fusion, resulting in 134 publications that have been cited over 5000 times. Dr. Chacón has been an Associate and Executive Editor in the Journal of Computational Physics from 2013-2022 and 2015-2021, respectively, and several times Guest Editor in the SIAM Journal of Scientific Computing since 2016. Dr. Chacón has organized numerous conferences and workshops, including the International Sherwood Fusion Theory Conference (Chair, 2011-12), the Copper Mountain Meeting on Iterative Methods (Scientific Committee member since 2016), the Kinetic Effects in Inertial Confinement Fusion Workshop (co-Chair, 2018), the International Conference of Numerical Simulation of Plasmas (Chair, 2019), and the Joint Institute for Fusion Theory US-Japan Workshop on Multiscale Simulation of Plasmas (US co-Chair, 2019).