A fully spectral methodology for magnetohydrodynamic calculations in a whole sphere

Abstract

Abstract We present a fully spectral methodology for magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) calculations in a whole sphere. The use of Jones–Worland polynomials for the radial expansion guarantees that the physical variables remain infinitely differentiable throughout the spherical volume. Furthermore, we present a mathematically motivated and systematic strategy to relax the very stringent time step constraint that is present close to the origin when a spherical harmonic expansion is used for the angular direction. The new constraint allows for significant savings even on relatively simple solutions as demonstrated on the so-called full sphere benchmark, a specific problem with a very accurately-known solution. The numerical implementation uses a 2D data decomposition which allows it to scale to thousands of cores on present-day high performance computing systems. In addition to validation results, we also present three new whole sphere dynamo solutions that present a relatively simple structure.