Identification

Title

GAMERA: A three-dimensional finite-volume MHD solver for non-orthogonal curvilinear geometries

Abstract

Efficient simulation of plasmas in various contexts often involves the use of meshes that conform to the intrinsic geometry of the system under consideration. We present here a description of a new magnetohydrodynamic code, GAMERA (Grid Agnostic MHD for Extended Research Applications), designed to combine geometric flexibility with high-order spatial reconstruction and constrained transport to maintain the divergence-free magnetic field. GAMERA carries on the legacy of its predecessor, the LFM (Lyon-Fedder-Mobarry), a research code whose use in space physics has spanned three decades. At the time of its initial development, the LFM code had a number of novel features: eighth-order centered spatial differencing, the Partial Donor Cell Method limiter for shock capturing, a non-orthogonal staggered mesh with constrained transport, and conservative averaging-reconstruction for axis singularities. The capability to handle multiple ion species was also added later. GAMERA preserves the core numerical philosophy of LFM while also incorporating numerous algorithmic and computational improvements. The upgrades in the numerical schemes include accurate grid metric calculations using high-order Gaussian quadrature techniques, high-order upwind reconstruction, non-clipping options for interface values, and improved treatment of axis singularities. The improvements in the code implementation include the use of data structures and memory access patterns conducive to aligned vector operations and the implementation of hybrid parallelism, using MPI and OMP. GAMERA is designed to be a portable and easy-to-use code that implements multidimensional MHD simulations in arbitrary non-orthogonal curvilinear geometries on modern supercomputer architectures.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7c250kr

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-09-19T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Copyright 2019 American Astronomical Society.

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata date

2025-07-11T19:25:31.006496

Metadata language

eng; USA