Our Research Projects

Vortex avalanche simulations

This is a project which is currently making use of HPC facilities at Newcastle University. It is active.

Project Contacts

For further information about this project, please contact:


Project Description

This project uses numerical simulations to study superfluid vortex dynamics in neutron star crusts and cores. In particular, we simulate vortex avalanches, which are believed to be the cause of the rotational glitches observed in many neutron stars. We model the vortices using a microscale (Gross-Pitaevskii) model, both in two and three dimensions.


Software or Compute Methods

The Gross-Pitaevskii simulations use an in-house code written in the MATLAB and JULIA programming languages. The numerical packages are implemented for both CPU and GPU nodes, and can be run in parellel using OpenMP. Further details of the code are contained in two recent publications: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/adc383 and https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-024-03064-7.