Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2009 APS March Meeting
Volume 54, Number 1
Monday–Friday, March 16–20, 2009; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Session Z6: Impact of NSF's TeraGrid on Physics Research |
Hide Abstracts |
Sponsoring Units: DCOMP Chair: Michael Levine, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center Room: 406 |
Friday, March 20, 2009 11:15AM - 11:51AM |
Z6.00001: Teragrid and Physics Research Invited Speaker: TeraGrid is the program that includes and ties together the high end computational resources (supercomputing, storage, visualization, data collections, science gateways) provided by NSF for the nation's researchers, and supported by computing and technology experts. World-class facilities, on a much larger scale than ever before, present major new opportunities for physics researchers to carry out computations that would have been infeasible just a few years ago. I will briefly review the available resources, how they can be used (together, if needed), explain how easy it is to get access to them, and present some examples of outstanding physics research that they have already enabled. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, March 20, 2009 11:51AM - 12:27PM |
Z6.00002: Impact of the TeraGrid on Materials Science Invited Speaker: The TeraGrid cyberinfrastructure has enabled many scientific successes. This talk will highlight - through a set of examples using a variety of computational methods - how the TeraGrid has in particular affected research in materials science. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, March 20, 2009 12:27PM - 1:03PM |
Z6.00003: Impact of TeraGrid on Cosmic Simulations Invited Speaker: Many of the advances in our understanding of cosmic structure have come from direct computer modeling. In cosmology, we need to develop computer simulations that cover this vast dynamic range of spatial and time scales: we need to include the effect of gravitational fields generated by (dark matter in) superclusters of galaxies on the formation of galaxies, which in turn harbor gas that cools and makes stars and is being funneled into supermassive blackholes the size of the solar system. Computational cosmology, simulating the entire universe, represents perhaps one of most challenging application for the TeraGrid. I will present recent and upcoming work on computational cosmology using the TeraGrid systems. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, March 20, 2009 1:03PM - 1:39PM |
Z6.00004: Virtual photons in imaginary time: Computing Casimir forces in new geometries Invited Speaker: One of the most dramatic manifestations of the quantum nature of light in the past half-century has been the Casimir force: a force between neutral objects at close separations caused by quantum vacuum fluctuations in the electromagnetic fields. In classical photonics, wavelength-scale structures can be designed to dramatically alter the behavior of light, so it is natural to consider whether analogous geometry-based effects occur for Casimir forces. However, this problem turns out to be surprisingly difficult for all but the simplest planar geometries. (The deceptively simple case of an infinite plate and infinite cylinder, for perfect metals, was first solved in 2006.) Many formulations of the Casimir force, indeed, correspond to impossibly hard numerical problems. We will describe how the availability of large-scale computing resources in NSF's Teragrid, combined with reformulations of the Casimir-force problem oriented towards numerical computation, are enabling the exploration of Casimir forces in new regimes of geometry and materials. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, March 20, 2009 1:39PM - 2:15PM |
Z6.00005: Molecular mechanics of DNA stretching, electrophoresis and condensation Invited Speaker: Without a doubt, DNA is the most celebrated macromolecule as it carries the genetic blueprint of a living organism. In addition to its fundament role in biology, DNA exhibits a variety of unusual physical properties. For example, the force-extension dependence of double-stranded DNA has a well-defined plasticity plateau that is associated with melting of its two strands. Being highly negatively charged, DNA molecules can attract one another and form a condensed state. The direction of the DNA motion in free electrophoresis can reverse upon changing the concentration of the surrounding electrolyte. Despite a number of theoretical and experimental studies, the nature of the microscopic processes that give rise to the above phenomena remain highly debated. With the advent of massively parallel supercomputers it became possible to characterize these processes directly, through all-atom molecular dynamics simulations. In this talk I will describe the results of multiple sub-microsecond simulations of various DNA systems that provide insights into the microscopic origin of the plasticity plateau in stretched DNA and into the mechanisms of DNA-DNA attraction and electrophoresis. [Preview Abstract] |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700