HIERARCHICAL TREE-STRUCTURES AS ADAPTIVE MESHES

New adaptive mesh refinement algorithms provide an opportunity to utilize the same hierarchical tree-structures developed for multipole-based particle simulations in grid-based simulations of both continuum and particle problems. Representing both a multipole method simulation and an adaptive mesh simulation with this same structure provides a natural formalism with which to unite these two classes of solvers. This paper discusses how both methods exploit the same basic principle of locality evident in many systems, such as those governed by Poisson's Equation, and introduces issues and potential problems to be addressed in an implementation. The locality of the systems and the resulting algorithms provide important benefits for implementations on massively parallel computers.