Science Application: High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics with Petabytes

Project Title: Sustaining and Extending the Open Science Grid: Science Innovation on a PetaScale Nationwide Facility

Principal Investigator: Miron Livny
Affiliation: University of Wisconsin

Participating Institutions and Co-Investigators:
Boston University, James Shank
California Institute of Technology, Albert Lazzarini
Cornell University, Lawrence Gibbons
Columbia University, Michael Tuts
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Torre Wenaus
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Ruth Pordes (Co-PI) and Donald Petravick
Indiana University, S. Leigh Grundhoefer
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Douglas Olson
Stanford University-Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Robert Cowles
State University of New York at Buffalo, Mark Green
University of California-San Diego, Frank Wuerthwein
University of Chicago, Ian Foster
University of Florida, Paul Avery
University of Iowa, Shaowen Wang
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Alan Blatecky
University of Southern California-ISI, Carl Kesselman
University of Wisconsin, Miron Livny (PI)

Funding Partners: Office of Science — Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Office of High Energy Physics, and Office of Nuclear Physics; and the National Science Foundation

Budget and Duration: Approximately $6.1 million per year for five years (Subject to acceptable progress review and the availability of appropriated funds)

Research Summary: This project brings together a unique ensemble of domain scientists, software developers and providers of computing resources who share a common goal: to stimulate new discoveries by providing scientists with effective and dependable access to the Open Science Grid (OSG), a national distributed computational facility. The massive amounts of data generated by the next generation of physics accelerators and detectors poses significant challenges to our computing and network infrastructure. The requirements in scale of resources, users, capacity and performance of the OSG facility are driven by the user communities, in particular the physics communities that are committed to the use of OSG. This project will maintain and operate a petascale nationwide distributed facility that can grow to provide thousands of users at universities and DOE laboratories throughout the U.S. with effective access to massive computational and storage resources. Technical activities to engage, train and include new researchers are integral parts of our program of work. The engagement activity will bring each new community to contribute to and benefit from the facility. New IT technologies are integrated and deployed in response to explicit needs and are evaluated in a real-life setting.

Relevance to DOE Mission: A reliable national infrastructure that can deal with the data management and analysis of petabytes of data from the next generation of physics accelerators and detectors is vital to maximizing the benefit of U.S. investments in these experiments. Without this effort, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the U.S to optimally exploit the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) competitively. This effort proposes a production environment for distributed data-intensive science provided through a consortium that consists of a unique ensemble of domain scientists, software developers and providers of computing resources using distributed computing tools and computing resources to transform simulation and experimental science in the U.S. The OSG Facility is an integral element of the Worldwide LHC Grid, the LIGO Data Grid, and the Tevatron Run II SAMGrid. A unique feature of the OSG Facility is support for the dynamic integration of new resources and applications and the harnessing of all available resources, thus extending the return on investments of our computing infrastructure and easing the inclusion of new communities.

Science Application: Computational Astrophysics

Project Title: Computational Astrophysics Consortium: Supernovae, Gamma Ray Bursts, and Nucleosynthesis. Includes a Science Application Partnership — Computational Astrophysics Consortium: Adaptive Algorithms (Bell)

Principal Investigator: Stan Woosley
Affiliation: University of California at Santa Cruz

Participating Institutions and Co-Investigators:
Johns Hopkins University, Dan Kasen
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Ann Almgren, John Bell and Peter Nugent
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Rob Hoffman, Louis Howell, and Jason Pruet
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alex Heger
Stanford University, Roger Blandford
University of California at Berkeley, Jon Arons, Richard Klein, Chris McKee, and Saul Perlmutter
University of Arizona, Adam Burrows and Ivan Hubeny
University of California at Santa Cruz, Stan Woosley (PI), Gary Glatzmaier and Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz

Funding Partners: Office of Science — Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, Office of High Energy Physics, and Office of Nuclear Physics; and the National Nuclear Security Administration

Budget and Duration: Approximately $1.9 million per year for five years (Subject to acceptable progress review and the availability of appropriated funds)

Research Summary: This project follows stars and the explosive phenomena they produce, especially supernovae of all types, gamma-ray bursts, and x-ray bursts. This effort includes a Science Application Partnership on Adaptive Algorithms (PI: John Bell, LBNL) that will develop the software needed for these efforts. The principal science topics are — in order of priority — (1) models for Type Ia supernovae, (2) radiation transport, spectrum formation, and nucleosynthesis in model supernovae of all types; (3) the observational implications of these results for experiments in which DOE has an interest, especially the Joint Dark Energy Mission, Supernova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP) satellite observatory, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), and ground-based supernova searches; (4) core collapse supernovae; (5) gamma-ray bursts; (6) "hypernovae" from Population III stars; and (7) x-ray bursts. Models of these phenomena share a common need for nuclear reactions and radiation transport coupled to multi-dimensional fluid flow. The Computational Astrophysics Consortium team will meet frequently and plans to share the mentoring of graduate students and postdocs by having them circulate to at least two sites. Principle products will be not only a better first-principles understanding of supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and nucleosynthesis, but also theoretical data bases that will allow the more precise and reliable use of supernovae for cosmological distance determination. Studies of nucleosynthesis in stars and supernovae will be the most complete in the world and will highlight nuclear uncertainties that could be elucidated by a rare isotope facility. Over the next five years, this effort will address significant gaps in our understanding and will directly influence the construction of planned and future experiments, to confront the greatest mystery in high-energy physics and astronomy today — the nature of dark energy.

Relevance to DOE Mission: This project has the potential to make significant contributions to DOE efforts in High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Stockpile Stewardship. Supernovae and gamma-ray bursters are the most energetic explosions in the universe and are of high scientific interest in their own right. They are also the source of all heavier elements in the universe and hence are of great interest to nuclear physics in understanding their role in nucleosynthesis. Type 1a supernovae are used as standard candles for measurement of the expansion of the universe. Consequently, they are instrumental in understanding one of the greatest mysteries in high-energy physics and astronomy today, the nature of dark energy. The light spectra generated in this project will help in the interpretation of important experiments in high energy physics such as SNAP and LSST.