Fourier analysis of Solar atmospheric numerical simulations accelerated with GPUs (CUDA).

Abstract:

Solar dynamics from the convection zone creates a variety of waves that may propagate through the solar atmosphere. These waves are important in facilitating the energy transfer between the sun’s surface and the corona as well as propagating energy throughout the solar system. How and where these waves are dissipated remains an open question. Advanced 3D numerical simulations have furthered our understanding of the processes involved. Fourier transforms to understand the nature of the waves by finding the frequency and wavelength of these waves through the simulated atmosphere, as well as the nature of their propagation and where they get dissipated. In order to analyze the different waves produced by the aforementioned simulations and models, Fast Fourier Transform algorithms will be applied. Since the processing of the multitude of different layers of the simulations (of the order of several 100^3 grid points) would be time intensive and inefficient on a CPU, CUDA, a computing architecture that harnesses the power of the GPU, will be used to accelerate the calculations.