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I research computational plasma science in order to advance fusion reactor designs. Improved computational methods for fusion plasma will allow researchers to better characterize and improve fusion confinement schemes in advance of costly prototype construction.
Fusion plasma simulation has much in common with computational fluid dynamics (CFD), but adds the complexities of modeling the electromagnetic interactions of the charged plasma species, confinement fields, and heating fields. Modeling, then, involves elaborate codes with computational demands that can limit the approximation of real-world behavior. Current computational techniques are insufficient because they are unable to model the full reactor size at time scales long enough to evaluate all concerns.
My research aims to increase the scale and inclusiveness of simulations in order to evaluate previously unattainable reactor performance. I do this by developing plasma modeling software that handles ion, electron, and neutral species as separate interacting fluids. The software is targeted for massively parallel and distributed execution.
I am specifically working to develop codes that perform well on multi-core processors such as graphics processors and the newest generation of CPUs. Modern graphics processors have rapidly outpaced the performance advances of general purpose processors by focusing on architecture designs that efficiently handle floating point math operations and distribute execution to hundreds of cores on a single chip. The national supercomputing infrastructure supported by D.O.E., N.S.F., and others are developing supercomputers consisting of thousands of GPUs.
With research that crosses computational science, mathematics, and plasma physics, I work to improve understanding of fusion reactor dynamics in order to accelerate the development of fusion energy.
U. Inan, M. Golkowski, D. Carpenter, N. Reddell, R. Moore, T. Bell, E. Paschal, P. Kossey, E. Kennedy, and S. Meth (2004), Multi-hop whistler-mode ELF/VLF signals and triggered emissions excited by the HAARP HF heater, Geophysics Research Letters, 31 , L24805, doi:10.1029/2004GL021647.
N. Reddell, E. Bollt, T. Welch, (2005), A Dual-Synchrony Chaotic Communication Scheme, IEEE Journal Circuits, Systems and Signal Processing, 24 5 557-570.
R. Cole, N. Reddell, U. Inan, S. Kery, J. Cappellini, P. Smit, G. Greider, (2005) From Alaska to the South Pacific in one-hop, OCEANS Proceedings of MTS/IEEE, Vol. 1 917-922.
R. Cole, N Reddell, U. Inan, (2005), From Alaska to the South Pacific in One Hop, Sea Technology, April 2005.
N. Reddell, (2003), One-Hop ELF/VLF Measurements at the HAARP Conjugate Point: Buoy Feasibility Study, Stanford University VLF Group, January 2005.
N. Reddell, E. Bollt, T. Welch, (2002) Development of a digital signal processor (DSP) based chaotic communication system with emphasis on military applications, appeared MILCOM 2002.
N. Reddell, (2002) Development of a digital signal processor (DSP) based chaotic communication system with emphasis on military applications, U.S.N.A. Trident Scholar Research Report no. 300.
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