Physics

In almost all fields of physics, such as atomic and molecular physics, solid state physics, plasma physics, hydrodynamics, electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, quantum chromodynamics, high-energy physics, astro- and geophysics, fundamental new results were achieved by meands of High Performance Computing. It provides the possibility of analyzing complex systems by the aid of simulation. This procedure is as important as theoretical investigations and closely interacts with the latter. Numerical simulation is more and more becoming a pillar equivalent to the two classical pillars of gaining knowledge, namely the theoretical investigation and the experiment. Corresponding to the problems involved and the methods and tools used, “Wissenschaftliches Rechten” — the German designation — has a strongly interdisciplinary character by integrating contributions from different fields of natural sciences, applied and numerical mathematics as well as informatics. In the following, out of numerous projects in the field of physics currently running at the HLRS, 14 projects were selected to illustrate the scientific progress which can be achieved with the supercomputer resources of the HLRS with examples from geophysics, astrophysics, molecular dynamics and solid state physics.