EUROfusion High Level Support Team adapting to work from home

The High Level Support Team (HLST) is a unit from EUROfusion that provides support to the European fusion community to ensure optimal exploitation of the High Performance Computing (HPC) resources such as the MARCONI-fusion supercomputer at CINECA (Italy).

The HLST consists of a full-time core team at the IPP Garching (Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik) and a number of part-time members in other institutions. The latter include Xavier Sáez from our fusion group at Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC). To guarantee an optimal flow of communication within the unit, there are two face-to-face meetings per year in Garching, Germany, where members share their work and experiences. However, because of the Covid-19 crisis, this year this has changed.

The spring meeting took place on 21 April as an online meeting. All staff joined thanks to a video call from their homes. During this meeting, Xavier presented the completed work performed to improve the performance of the ERO2.0 code.

This code models plasma-wall interaction and global material migration in fusion devices. It takes into account the source of the particles, disassociation and ionization, how the particles are transported, and also the interactions with boundary conditions. The models are supported by a database that is constantly updated and complemented from different sources. The code is highly adaptable and thus can be used for a range of applications beyond fusion. It has been recently identified as a solution with potential for technology transfer to other domains within the EUROfusion Consortium on Fusion Technology Transfer Activities (FUTTA-II).

The HLST staff will continue to work from their homes to provide support to scientists from the Research Units of the EUROfusion consortium for the development and optimization of their codes.

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