FCT's advanced computing services allow classical laws of statistical physics to be challenged

Researchers Luís Oliveira e Silva, Thales Silva and Pablo Bilbao (PhD student) from the Institute of Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion, a research unit of the Instituto Superior Técnico, have discovered previously unknown properties in plasmas, which travel at almost the speed of light when exposed to ultra-intense magnetic fields. The discovery, published in the scientific journal Science Advances, could help explain the origin of radio emissions observed in neutron stars.

For this discovery, which defies the classical laws of statistical physics, the researchers used the advanced computing services made available to the scientific community by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), through its digital services unit, the FCCN.

The ability to carry out demanding numerical simulations and to process large volumes of data with high performance, tasks currently made possible by the Deucalion Supercomputer, proved essential to the success of this research. The research team stresses the decisive importance of these resources in achieving the results.

"The reported discovery explores the non-linear behavior of plasma, and it is only possible to unequivocally demonstrate the theoretical prediction with large-scale numerical simulations," explains Luís Oliveira e Silva, the project's coordinator. "Without these simulations, the discovery could not be confirmed. In our work, the simulations are genuine numerical experiments and, without FCT's Advanced Computing resources, these numerical experiments could not have been carried out," he adds.

Pablo Bilbao, a researcher on the team, also highlights the limitations they would have faced without access to advanced computing: "Without FCT's advanced computing resources, we would only have been able to study the beginning of the process, where theory can still predict what happens. But it was thanks to the large-scale simulations that we were able to go much further - and it was on that journey that the new phenomenon eventually emerged. Without that access, this discovery simply wouldn't have been possible."

In addition to the computing resources themselves, the team also highlights the effective collaboration with FCCN's technical services: "We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the FCCN team, in particular the Advanced Computing Services and Deucalion, for the resources they made available to us and for the support they provided, both technically and administratively, throughout the project. This support was fundamental for us to maximize the use of the resources made available," says Thales Silva.

Luís Oliveira e Silva also stresses the importance of advanced computing for the competitiveness of national research: "Numerical simulations are central to our work and are the scientific instrument for testing our ideas and theories. Without FCT's advanced computing resources, we wouldn't be able to carry out internationally competitive work. And with appropriate and closer technical support, the work is significantly accelerated. It allows us to be at the forefront of astrophysical plasma research, competing with the best groups in the world in this area."

Deucalion is part of the EuroHPC joint venture's network of European supercomputers, accessible to research and innovation communities. It is a joint FCT project, developed through the FCCN and the EuroHPC European partnership, funded by Investment RE-C05-i08 "Ciência Mais Digital" from the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR). This supercomputer is capable of achieving a High Performance Linpack (HPL) performance of 9.8 petaflops.

Image note: In these scenarios, the electrons are arranged in a ring, in what physicists call momentum space - a way of visualizing the velocities of the particles, rather than their position. The ring indicates that all the electrons share almost the same energy, a special condition that occurs in magnetized plasmas and can trigger the instability that gives rise to bursts of coherent radio waves. Credit: Pablo Bilbao, GoLP/IPFN/IST