Parallel 3-D hybrid particle-in-cell model for electromagnetic plasma

We have presented here the parallelization of a three-dimensional electromagnetic hybrid plasma particle-in-cell model and its performance on a eight-node symmetric multiprocessor machine. One-dimensional domain decomposition has been used to parallelize the hybrid particle-in-cell model where the electromagnetic fields are updated by solving the coupled set of Maxwell's equations using the finite-difference-time-domain technique and the particles are advanced spatially using the standard leap-frog scheme. Inter-processor communication between the adjacent processor domain has been achieved by using several common message-passing-interface routines. The performance results presented here are based on the problem of solar wind interaction with the earth's magnetic field.