A New Simulation Technique for Study of Collisionless Shocks: Self‐Adaptive Simulations

The traditional technique for simulating physical systems modeled by partial differential equations is by means of time‐stepping methodology where the state of the system is updated at regular discrete time intervals. This method has inherent inefficiencies. In contrast to this methodology, we have developed a new asynchronous type of simulation based on a discrete‐event‐driven (as opposed to time‐driven) approach, where the simulation state is updated on a “need‐to‐be‐done‐only” basis. Here we report on this new technique, show an example of particle acceleration in a fast magnetosonic shockwave, and briefly discuss additional issues that we are addressing concerning algorithm development and parallel execution.