Introducing ZEUS-MP: A 3D, Parallel, Multiphysics Code for Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

We describe ZEUS-MP: a Multi-Physics, Massively-Parallel, Message-Passing code for astrophysical fluid dynamics simulations in 3 dimensions. ZEUS-MP is a follow-on to the sequential ZEUS-2D and ZEUS-3D codes developed and disseminated by the Laboratory for Computational Astrophysics (lca.ncsa.uiuc.edu) at NCSA. V1.0 released 1/1/2000 includes the following physics modules: ideal hydrodynamics, ideal MHD, and self-gravity. Future releases will include flux-limited radiation diffusion, thermal heat conduction, two-temperature plasma, and heating and cooling functions. The covariant equations are cast on a moving Eulerian grid with Cartesian, cylindrical, and spherical polar coordinates currently supported. Parallelization is done by domain decomposition and implemented in F77 and MPI. The code is portable across a wide range of platforms from networks of workstations to massively parallel processors. Some parallel performance results are presented as well as an application to turbulent star formation.