ASTRONUM-2015

Abstract

The Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR) at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Maison de la Simulation at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat a l'energie atomique et aux energies alternatives, CEA) organized the 10th annual International Conference on Numerical Modeling of Space Plasma Flows (ASTRONUM- 2015) on June 8-12, 2015 in Avignon, France.The Program Committee consisted of Tahar Amari (CNRS Ecole Polytechnique, France), Edouard Audit (CEA/CNRS Maison de la Simulation, Gif-sur-Yvette, France, co-chair), Phillip Colella (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA), José María Ibáñez, University of Valencia, Spain), Ewald Müller (Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics, Garching, Germany), Nikolai Pogorelov (University of Alabama in Huntsville/CSPAR, USA, chair), Kazunari Shibata (Kyoto University, Japan), James Stone (Princeton University, USA), Brian Van Straalen (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA), and Gary P. Zank (University of Alabama in Huntsville/CSPAR).The conference attracted 67 scientists representing different branches of the plasma simulation community. The distinctive feature of this conference is a combination of diverse research topics, all of which are essential for performing high-resolution, continuum mechanics and particle simulations of physical phenomena in space physics and astrophysics. Among such topics were software packages for modeling and analyzing plasma flows; advanced numerical methods for space, astrophysical and geophysical flows; large-scale fluid-based, kinetic, and hybrid simulations; turbulence and cosmic ray transport; and magnetohydrodynamics. The applications discussed included cosmology and galaxy formation, supernova explosions, physics of the Sun-heliosphere- magnetosphere environments, the interstellar medium and star formation, stellar physics, experimental plasma physics, astrophysical accretion, numerical methods for ideal and non-ideal, relativistic and nonrelativistic MHD, etc. The proceedings volume is structured so that it covers all of these topics.A distinctive feature of the ASTRONUM conference series is based on the idea that modelers working in seemingly distant fields should have an opportunity to share their scientific achievements with the broad community of computational scientists performing numerical experiments. As in previous ASTRONUM meetings, we were interested in physical systems that are coupled across a multiplicity of spatial and temporal scales via collision-like integral terms that incorporate diverse physical processes.The contributors to this volume are both young researchers and renowned experts in space physics and astrophysics, applied mathematics, and computer science, particularly data handling and visualization. This book describes the application of numerical methods and the algorithms themselves, allowing us to discuss the challenges that theory imposes on numerical schemes for solving partial differential equations describing collisional and collisionless processes in space and astrophysical plasmas.We would like to thank the participants who submitted their papers to Proceedings of ASTRONUM- 2015 and especially to those who reviewed manuscripts thus ensuring the high quality of this publication. We also are grateful to Valerie Belle and Adeline Holton for the excellent management of the conference.The book will be useful to graduate and postgraduate students majoring in space physics, astrophysics, numerical, engineering, and applied mathematics. It is also aimed at specialists in applied mathematics, and various fields of physics that involve flows of partially ionized plasmas at both the collisional and collisionless levels.