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At least 415 records · Page 23

On Using Linux Kernel Huge Pages with FLASH, an Astrophysical Simulation Code

We present efforts at improving the performance of FLASH, a multi-scale, multi-physics simulation code principally for astrophysical applications, by using huge pages on Ookami, an HPE Apollo 80 A64FX platform. FLASH is written principally in modern Fortran and makes use of the PARAMESH library to manage a block-structured adaptive mesh. We explored options for enabling the use of huge pages with several compilers, but we were only able to successfully use huge pages when compiling with the Fujitsu compiler. As a result, the use of huge pages substantially reduced the number of translation lookaside buffer misses, but overall performance gains were marginal.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

pvlib python: 2023 project update

pvlib python is a community-developed, open-source software toolbox for simulating the performance of solar photovoltaic (PV) energy components and systems. It provides reference implementations of over 100 empirical and physics-based models from the peer-reviewed scientific literature, including solar position algorithms, irradiance models, thermal models, and PV electrical models. In addition to individual low-level model implementations, pvlib python provides high-level workflows that chain these models together like building blocks to form complete “weather-to-power” photovoltaic system models. It also provides functions to fetch and import a wide variety of weather datasets useful for PV modeling. pvlib python has been developed since 2013 and follows modern best practices for open-source python software, with comprehensive automated testing, standards-based packaging, and semantic versioning. Its source code is developed openly on GitHub and releases are distributed via the Python Package Index (PyPI) and the conda-forge repository. pvlib python’s source code is made freely available under the permissive BSD-3 license. Here we (the project’s core developers) present an update on pvlib python, describing capability and community development since our 2018 publication (Holmgren, Hansen, & Mikofski, 2018).

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Assessment of the MAMMOTH and PRONGHORN Pebble Bed Reactor Modeling Capabilities for the HTR-PM Design

This assessment explores the current analysis methodologies of various external and MOOSE-based tools available at the Idaho National Laboratory to model pebble bed reactor multiphysics phenomena. The study involves three MOOSE-based, coupled codes: 1) MAMMOTH for reactor physics, 2) Rattlesnake for neutron transport and 3) Pronghorn for thermal fluids and strongly coupled conjugate heat transfer. These advanced tools are being developed under DOE-NE’s Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation program (NEAMS). They currently contain a collection of advanced modeling capabilities that allow high-fidelity simulations of advanced reactor concepts including gas and fluoride-salt cooled pebble bed reactors. Software development of these tools follows NQA-1 standards ensuring software quality that many of the currently deployed legacy codes lack. In this work, the MAMMOTH Pronghorn tools are compared to the legacy codes PEBBED-THERMIX-KONVEK. The external codes in use are LAMMPS for pebble mechanics and Serpent for cross section preparation. The coupling under MOOSE enables significant flexibility for modern engineering tools since MOOSE applications can be seamlessly coupled with various levels of resolution. This report focuses on low-resolution (r-z) and midresolution (3-D) homogenized geometries. The high-resolution Pebble Tracking Transport solution is not pursued herein and is postponed to future work. The results from this assessment show that the new MOOSE-based tools compare well with the results from legacy tools (r-z) and produce reasonable accuracy limited by the methods in the legacy tools. In the 3-D studies, the PJFNK-SPH methodology available in MAMMOTH allows the reproduction of Monte Carlo results with a transport-corrected diffusion solution. This has implications for the coupled solutions since without the SPH correction the temperature coefficient of reactivity is under-predicted and leads to lower temperature feedback and a significantly higher eigenvalue showing a difference of 2000 pcm.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

HEP Software Foundation Community White Paper Working Group - Data Processing Frameworks

Data processing frameworks are an essential part of HEP experiments' software stacks. Frameworks provide a means by which code developers can undertake the essential tasks of physics data processing, accessing relevant inputs and storing their outputs, in a coherent way without needing to know the details of other domains. Frameworks provide essential core services for developers and help deliver a configurable working application to the experiments' production systems. Modern HEP processing frameworks are in the process of adapting to a new computing landscape dominated by parallel processing and heterogeneity, which pose many questions regarding enhanced functionality and scaling that must be faced without compromising the maintainability of the code. In this paper we identify a program of work that can help further clarify the key concepts of frameworks for HEP and then spawn R&D activities that can focus the community's efforts in the most efficient manner to address the challenges of the upcoming experimental program.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Report Series: Evaluation, Finding Of Effect, And Mitigation Documentation For Building 23-113, Mercury, Area 23, Nevada National Security Site, Nye County, Nevada

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office (NNSA/NFO) plans to demolish Building 23-113 in Mercury (Nevada State Historic Preservation Office [SHPO] Resource No. B15236), which is on the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) in Nye County, Nevada. Demolition of Building 23-113 is part of the long-term project to modernize the town of Mercury on the NNSS for future mission needs. The project is considered an undertaking subject to review under Title 54 of United States Code (USC) § 306108, commonly known as Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, Title 54 USC § 300101, et seq., and its implementing regulations, Title 36 of the Code of Federal Regulations (36 CFR) Part 800. In 2018, Desert Research Institute (DRI) completed an architectural survey of the town of Mercury. This effort resulted in the identification, recordation, and evaluation of the Mercury Historic District (MHD, SHPO Resource No. D230), including the identification of its contributing elements (Reno et al. 2018). The MHD was recommended eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP, National Register) under the Secretary of the Interior’s (SOI) Significance Criteria A and C, as defined in 36 CFR Part 60.4, as a significant concentration of buildings and structures with a direct and important association with Cold War-era nuclear testing from 1951 through 1992. It has not been evaluated under Criteria B and D to date. As part of a larger modernization program for Mercury, the NNSA/NFO and the SHPO executed the 2018 Programmatic Agreement between the National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Field Office and the Nevada State Historic Preservation Officer regarding Modernization and Operational Maintenance of the Nevada National Security Site, at Mercury in Nye County, Nevada (the Mercury PA). The Mercury PA includes streamlined Section 106 procedures for undertakings in the MHD based on contributing element categories. Building 23-113 is identified in Appendix C of the Mercury PA as a Category I contributing element, indicating that it might be individually eligible for the NRHP. It is a historic property for the purposes of Section 106 compliance and subject to the stipulations of the Mercury PA. Per Stipulation VI of the Mercury PA, when the Area of Potential Effect (APE) for an undertaking includes Category I elements, the NNSA/NFO must evaluate the Category I elements for individual NRHP eligibility under all of the SOI Significance Criteria prior to initiating any activity that may affect the elements. Therefore, the purpose of this report is to evaluate Building 23-113 as a potential individually eligible historic property in fulfillment of Stipulation VI of the Mercury PA. The evaluation detailed herein concludes that although Building 23-113 is significant at the local level for its important role as a recreational facility on the NNSS, the building lacks sufficient integrity to convey its significance. It is not individually eligible for listing in the NRHP at any level. The building remains eligible as a contributing element to the MHD.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Verification and Validation of Digitally Upgraded Control Rooms

As nuclear power plants undertake main control room modernization, a challenge is the lack of a clearly defined human factors process to follow. Verification and validation (V&V) as applied in the nuclear power community has tended to involve efforts such as integrated system validation, which comes at the tail end of the design stage. To fill in guidance gaps and create a step-by-step process for control room modernization, we have developed the Guideline for Operational Nuclear Usability and Knowledge Elicitation (GONUKE). This approach builds on best practices in the software industry, which prescribe an iterative user-centered approach featuring multiple cycles of design and evaluation. Nuclear regulatory guidance for control room design emphasizes summative evaluation—which occurs after the design is complete. In the GONUKE approach, evaluation is also performed at the formative stage of design—early in the design cycle using mockups and prototypes for evaluation. The evaluation may involve expert review (e.g., software heuristic evaluation at the formative stage and design verification against human factors standards like NUREG-0700 at the summative stage). The evaluation may also involve user testing (e.g., usability testing at the formative stage and integrated system validation at the summative stage). An additional, often overlooked component of evaluation is knowledge elicitation, which captures operator insights into the system. In this report we outline these evaluation types across design phases that support the overall modernization process. The objective is to provide industry-suitable guidance for steps to be taken in support of the design and evaluation of a new human-machine interface (HMI) in the control room. We suggest the value of early-stage V&V and highlight how this early-stage V&V can help improve the design process for control room modernization. We argue that there is a need to overcome two shortcomings of V&V in current practice—the propensity for late-stage V&V and the use of increasingly complex psychological assessment measures for V&V.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Automated Hybrid Variance Reduction on Advanced Architectures in the Shift Monte Carlo Code

Monte Carlo transport methods are the most accurate schemes for solving problems with complex energy and spatial features, but they come with a high computational cost. Although hybrid methods have enabled the use of Monte Carlo transport for a large class of problems, they still require significant computing resources. Modern multicore CPUs with large numbers of compute cores and graphical processing units (GPUs) provide opportunities to optimize the memory and run-time costs of hybrid Monte Carlo methods. This paper documents the development and analysis of three Monte Carlo transport algorithms that support hybrid transport using the consistent adjoint-driven importance sampling (CADIS) and forward-weighted CADIS methods in the Shift Monte Carlo code: history-based transport using static and dynamic threading on multicore CPUs and event-based transport enabling weight window tracking on GPUs. The results are shown for two challenging hybrid problems on the Frontier supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. The results show that all three methods yield good performance and enable solutions of difficult fixed-source transport problems in less than 2 min on 20 nodes of Frontier. Dynamic threading was observed to give up to 20% better scaling behavior than static threading. Moreover, the AMD Instinct 250X GPU was found to give 9 to 11 times greater throughput per graphics compute die than the best CPU performance. In conclusion, additional opportunities for optimization of hybrid transport on GPUs are discussed.

Denovo↗

Transitioning from File-Based HPC Workflows to Streaming Data Pipelines with openPMD and ADIOS2

This paper aims to create a transition path from file-based IO to streaming-based workflows for scientific applications in an HPC environment. By using the openPMP-api, traditional workflows limited by filesystem bottlenecks can be overcome and flexibly extended for in situ analysis. The openPMD-api is a library for the description of scientific data according to the Open Standard for Particle-Mesh Data (openPMD). Its approach towards recent challenges posed by hardware heterogeneity lies in the decoupling of data description in domain sciences, such as plasma physics simulations, from concrete implementations in hardware and IO. The streaming backend is provided by the ADIOS2 framework, developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This paper surveys two openPMD-based loosely-coupled setups to demonstrate flexible applicability and to evaluate performance. In loose coupling, as opposed to tight coupling, two (or more) applications are executed separately, e.g. in individual MPI contexts, yet cooperate by exchanging data. This way, a streaming-based workflow allows for standalone codes instead of tightly-coupled plugins, using a unified streaming-aware API and leveraging high-speed communication infrastructure available in modern compute clusters for massive data exchange. We determine new challenges in resource allocation and in the need of strategies for a flexible data distribution, demonstrating their influence on efficiency and scaling on the Summit compute system. The presented setups show the potential for a more flexible use of compute resources brought by streaming IO as well as the ability to increase throughput by avoiding filesystem bottlenecks.

Poeschel, Franz↗

Parallelizable adjoint stencil computations using transposed forward-mode algorithmic differentiation

Algorithmic differentiation (AD) is a tool for generating discrete adjoint solvers, which efficiently compute gradients of functions with many inputs, for example for use in gradient-based optimization. AD is often applied to large computations such as stencil operators, which are an important part of most structured-mesh PDE solvers. Stencil computations are often parallelized, for example by using OpenMP, and optimized by using techniques such as cache-blocking and tiling to fully utilize multicore CPUs and many-core accelerators and GPUs. Differentiating these codes with conventional reverse-mode AD results in adjoint codes that cannot be expressed as stencil operations and may not be easily parallelizable. They thus leave most of the compute power of modern architectures unused. We present a method that combines forward-mode AD and loop transformation to generate adjoint solvers that use the same memory access pattern as the original computation that they are derived from and can benefit from the same optimization techniques. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated by generating a scalable adjoint CFD solver for multicore CPUs and Xeon Phi accelerators.

algorithmic differentiation↗

PyOMP: Multithreaded Parallel Programming in Python

We know that Python is a widely used language in scientific computing. When the goal is high performance, however, Python lags far behind low-level languages such as C and Fortran. To support applications that stress performance, Python needs to access the full capabilities of modern CPUs. That means support for parallel multithreading. In this paper, we describe PyOMP, a system that enables OpenMP in Python. Programmers write code in Python with OpenMP, Numba generates code that compiles to LLVM, and the resulting programs run with performance that approaches that from code written with C and OpenMP. In this paper we provide an update on the PyOMP project and explain how to install it and use it to write parallel multithreaded code in Python.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Modeling and simulation of multiphase flows

This presentation provides an overview of the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s (NETL) multiphase computational fluid dynamics codes. The highly successful Multiphase Flows with Interphase eXchanges (MFIX) suite has been used to model a wide range of applications including post-combustion carbon capture, bioreactor optimization, and bio-FCC regeneration. MFIX-Exa, a state-of-the-art CFD code, developed under DOE’s Exascale Computing Project, is built on the AMReX software framework (https://amrex-codes.github.io/) and is designed to leverage modern accelerator-based compute architectures. This presentation further reviews the underlying physical models of both MFIX and MFIX-Exa and contrasts their similarities and differences. Examples of past and present CFD simulations will illustrate how scientific computing at NETL is being used not only for scientific exploration but also for design, optimization and scale-up of multiphase flow devices.

Musser, Jordan [NETL]↗

Differential Privacy in Grid Kitchen: Implementation & Software Documentation

Sharing of power grid feeder models faces significant challenges due to the potential risk of exposing sensitive operational information. Traditional anonymization techniques have shown notable limitations in other sensitive domains, as evidenced by documented re-identification attacks that combine supposedly anonymized datasets with auxiliary information, raising concerns that similar vulnerabilities could affect power grid data. Consequently, there is a pressing need for a more rigorous privacy protection strategy that not only delivers formal mathematical guarantees but also preserves the analytical value of the shared models. To address this challenge, we have enhanced the Grid Kitchen framework by implementing differential privacy mechanisms within the distribution model dehydration pipeline. This implementation carefully calibrates and applies noise to sensitive attributes in feeder models according to configurable privacy levels—low, moderate, and high—each offering different balances between data utility and privacy protection. Our approach uses established noise functions (Gaussian for continuous data and Discrete Laplace for integer values) with parameters carefully calibrated so that the impact of individual data points is effectively masked in the final output. The integration leverages our Noise Catalog, which we developed to categorize feeder model properties by component type, data type, and sensitivity. This catalog guides the application of appropriate noise functions and privacy parameters ($\varepsilon$ and $\delta$) to each attribute, ensuring consistent privacy protection across the model while maintaining its structural integrity and analytical usefulness. This implementation also includes evaluation tools that allow model owners to assess the impact of privacy-preserving transformations before sharing data with external parties. This report provides documentation for the differential privacy capabilities added to the Grid Kitchen project. It includes a primer on differential privacy concepts and their importance in modern data sharing, details the architecture of our implementation, explains the privacy modes and parameter configurations, and offers practical guidance on using the code for applying differential privacy to grid feeder models. Through examples and code snippets, we demonstrate the effective application of these privacy-enhancing technologies, enabling utility operators and researchers to confidently share grid data while protecting sensitive information.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

ARCS Replacement at TREAT for TRTR 2020 - Abstract

The Transient REActor Test (TREAT) facility was restarted in 2017 to perform reactor fuels testing under transient conditions, following shutdown in 1994 and 23 years in non-operational standby. TREAT is a transient reactor that, like most pulsing reactors, can create natural shaped power pulses. However, TREAT provides the ability to shape the power pulse and control the energy deposition rate on the test specimens by automatically controlling the amount of reactivity insertion over time. The original automatic reactor control system (ARCS) was created in the 1980s using INTEL 8086 CPU boards and software written in assembly code. The need to maintain the system for the next 40+ years of TREAT life led to the decision to replace ARCS with modern hardware while maintaining the original functionality. After a prototyping effort, the replacement was successfully completed in the first quarter of 2020. The process and results of that effort are reported here.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

CTF Parallel Performance Improvements

CTF is a modernized version of COBRA-TF (Coolant Boiling in Rod Arrays-Two Fluid), which is a thermal hydraulic (T/H) sub-channel code based on a two-phase, two-fluid model that formulates the conservation equations of mass, energy, and momentum for three fields of vapor, continuous liquid, and entrained liquid droplets. Under the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, CTF is being further developed and improved for modeling and simulation of light water reactors. The code improvements for predicting T/H responses of pressurized water reactor (PWR) cores are focused on its applications to specific challenge problems deemed significant to the industry, such as departure from nucleate boiling (DNB) and crud-induced power shift. The code is also being used for T/H feedback in normal operating condition depletions in PWR and boiling water reactor designs in the reactor core simulator, Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications Core Simulator (VERA-CS), being developed by CASL. CTF modifications under the CASL program include software optimization, new closure models, and parallelization for modeling full reactor core T/H responses. The purpose of this work was to improve the parallel performance of CTF. CTF was originally parallelized via a domain-decomposition strategy using the Message Passing Interface (MPI), in which the basis of a solution domain was a physical assembly in the model. In other words, a user who wanted to perform a parallel solution with CTF had to provide the code one processor per assembly in the model (e.g., 56 cores for a 56 assembly quarter-core model, or 193 cores for a 193 assembly full-core model). This design was rigid, demanding a very specific number of processors for a model; furthermore, when CTF was run in VERA-CS-which typically uses thousands of processors- many processors sat idle during the CTF solve because CTF was unable to use any more processors than there are physical assemblies. This was not necessarily a problem if the CTF execution speed was very fast, but the average time spent in a CTF solve for prototypical PWR operating conditions was significant (i.e., over 20 % of the simulation wall time was being spent in CTF for a standard core depletion simulation). Larger, more computationally intensive simulations performed in support of the CASL DNB challenge problem demonstrated a need for improvements in this original parallelization approach. The specific goal of this work was to allow CTF to use more processors than there are physical assemblies in the model, which would not only speed up CTF and improve the overall efficiency of VERA-CS but also give users more-flexible options for executing their simulations. (authors)

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗

Collaborative Research: Improved Efficiency and Coupling of the Radiation Code in the ACME Earth System Model. Final Report

This final report details all work performed on the project by both project partners. This project provided support to properly couple RTE+RRTMGP, a high-performance broadband radiation code, within DOE’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). RTE+RRTMGP is a successor to the RRTMG radiation code, which has been widely accepted for its speed and accuracy by the global modeling community, and has been in use in the NCAR CESM for many years and was implemented in the initial version of E3SM. However, the computational cost of RRTMG remains high relative to other components in part due to its complexity and to its inefficient use of modern optimization strategies, issues that were rectified by the development of RTE+RRTMGP. Many of the accomplishment in this project necessitated significant collaboration with the E3SM development team. One focus of the project was to enhance the code’s optimization on the limited number of emerging computing systems on which the model is expected be used, including Many Integrated Core (MIC) architectures and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) hardware. We also developed additional capabilities for RTE+RRTMGP that E3SM scientists identified as important for the planned applications of the model. The result of our project was optimization of a key physical component (radiative transfer calculations) of E3SM, directly supporting E3SM’s overarching global modeling objectives. More broadly, this project provided overall advancements in the use of radiative transfer calculations in atmospheric modeling and simulation, particularly for climate.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

State Engagement in Electric Distribution System Planning

Electric distribution system planning is focused on assessing needed physical and operational changes to the local grid to maintain safe, reliable, and affordable service. While electric utilities have always engaged in this activity, the planning horizon has typically been short and involvement by state utility regulators minimal. Safety, reliability, and affordability remain top objectives for deeper state engagement in longer-term distribution system planning. Other drivers are proposed utility investments to replace aging infrastructure and modernize grids, opportunities to improve distribution system efficiency, enabling consumers to have greater control over energy costs and sources, and integrating higher levels of distributed energy resources (DERs) such as rooftop solar, distributed energy storage, and price-responsive demand. This report provides a snapshot of current state engagement in distribution system planning: •Part 1 describes activities in states that have adopted some elements of integrated distribution system planning and analysis (see Figure 1): New York, California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. It summarizes their impetus for early action, stated goals, regulatory requirements, additional state activities related to distribution system planning, and next steps. •Part 2 covers a broader array of state approaches throughout the country. For example, some of these states have long-standing distribution reliability and performance codes, requiring regulated utilities to report regularly on poor-performing circuits and propose investments for improvements. Other states require regulated utilities to make filings related to proposed grid modernization investments. A growing number of states are beginning to consider comprehensive distribution system planning processes. As this report highlights, approaches vary significantly from state to state, in part stemming from differences in electricity market structure. States can learn from each other and tailor successful approaches to their unique circumstances. Reviewing the broad range of legislative and public utility commission activities described in this report is a useful starting point.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Demand Response in Residential Energy Code: Technical Brief

As buildings account for over 75% of U.S. electricity use, effectively managing their loads can greatly facilitate the transition towards a clean, reliable grid. Grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) combine efficiency and demand flexibility with smart technologies and communication to provide occupant comfort and productivity while serving the grid as a distributed energy resource (DER). In turn, GEBs can play a key role in ensuring access to an affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern U.S. electric power system. Their national adoption could provide $\$$100-200 billion in U.S. electric power system cost savings over the next two decades. The associated reduction in CO 2 emissions is estimated at 6% per year by 2030 (DOE 2021). Building codes represent standard design practice in the construction industry and continually evolve to include advanced technologies and innovative practices. Historically, national model energy codes establish minimum efficiency requirements for new construction (ICC 2020). Expanding codes to support GEB capabilities is a pivotal step towards realizing demand flexibility in support of a clean grid by addressing capabilities to improve interoperability between smart building systems, the grid, and renewable energy resources. Realizing GEBs requires buildings with automated demand response (DR) capabilities that enable standardized communication with or control of, subject to explicit consumer consent, energy smart appliances or home energy management systems. This is achieved through direct or indirect (i.e., via an aggregator) communication between appliances and the electric grid. Energy codes can also support DR communication standardization and advance the deployment of building-integrated DERs such as energy storage, generation, and electric vehicles (EVs). Incorporating automated DR capabilities in energy codes provides many benefits to the consumers. Specifically, it aligns building electric load demand with intermittent renewable energy source availability, decreases peak load on the electric grid, allows buildings to respond to utility price signals, supports electrical network reliability and market growth of products and processes aligned with clean economic growth. The incorporation of DR into the model residential energy codes was considered for both the 2021 and 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) code development cycles. The approved DR measures in the 2021 cycle were removed in response to appeals (ICC 2020). Updated language was presented for consideration again for the 2024 IECC, where it was negotiated and again approved, and again removed in response to appeals (ICC 2024). This resulted in many sections, including sections on demand responsive controls, being moved to the credits options or an appendix as a voluntary application. This technical brief updates the proposed DR components such that they can be considered by states and local governments for direct incorporation into their codes, as well as for future IECC energy code development. The proposal refinements are intended to support consistency in approach and provide a degree of certainty for building owners, designers, contractors, manufacturers, and building and fire safety professionals. The scope of this technical brief includes three strategies for DR in residential buildings: 1) smart thermostats with demand-responsive control, 2) electric water heating incorporating demand-responsive controls and communication and 3) grid Integrated solar and energy storage systems.

2021 IECC↗

TurboRVB: A many-body toolkit for ab initio electronic simulations by quantum Monte Carlo

TurboRVB is a computational package for ab initio Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations of both molecular and bulk electronic systems. The code implements two types of well established QMC algorithms: Variational Monte Carlo (VMC) and diffusion Monte Carlo in its robust and efficient lattice regularized variant. A key feature of the code is the possibility of using strongly correlated many-body wave functions (WFs), capable of describing several materials with very high accuracy, even when standard mean-field approaches [e.g., density functional theory (DFT)] fail. The electronic WF is obtained by applying a Jastrow factor, which takes into account dynamical correlations, to the most general mean-field ground state, written either as an antisymmetrized geminal power with spin-singlet pairing or as a Pfaffian, including both singlet and triplet correlations. This WF can be viewed as an efficient implementation of the so-called resonating valence bond (RVB) Ansatz, first proposed by Pauling and Anderson in quantum chemistry [L. Pauling, The Nature of the Chemical Bond (Cornell University Press, 1960)] and condensed matter physics [P.W. Anderson, Mat. Res. Bull 8, 153 (1973)], respectively. The RVB Ansatz implemented in TurboRVB has a large variational freedom, including the Jastrow correlated Slater determinant as its simplest, but nontrivial case. Moreover, it has the remarkable advantage of remaining with an affordable computational cost, proportional to the one spent for the evaluation of a single Slater determinant. Therefore, its application to large systems is computationally feasible. The WF is expanded in a localized basis set. Several basis set functions are implemented, such as Gaussian, Slater, and mixed types, with no restriction on the choice of their contraction. The code implements the adjoint algorithmic differentiation that enables a very efficient evaluation of energy derivatives, comprising the ionic forces. Thus, one can perform structural optimizations and molecular dynamics in the canonical NVT ensemble at the VMC level. For the electronic part, a full WF optimization (Jastrow and antisymmetric parts together) is made possible, thanks to state-of-the-art stochastic algorithms for energy minimization. In the optimization procedure, the first guess can be obtained at the mean-field level by a built-in DFT driver. The code was efficiently parallelized by using a hybrid MPI-OpenMP protocol, which is also an ideal environment for exploiting the computational power of modern Graphics Processing Unit accelerators.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗