Releases

Get Smilei

Clone the latest version of Smilei from GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/SmileiPIC/Smilei.git

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You can find older, unsupported versions here

Changes made in the repository (not released)

  • Features:

    • Prescribed fields in AM geometry.

    • Particle reflective boundary conditions at Rmax in AM geometry.

    • 1st order Ruyten shape function in AM geometry.

    • Support for collisions in single mode AM geometry.

  • Bug fixes:

    • Tunnel ionization was wrong in some cases for high atomic numbers.

    • Custom functions in ParticleBinning crashed with python 3.12.

    • Species-specific diagnostics in AM geometry with vectorization.

    • Frozen particles in AM geometry with adaptive vectorization.

    • Happi’s average argument would sometimes be missing the last bin.

    • 1D projector on GPU without diagnostics

Ongoing projects

  • Already available, but experimental:

    • Particle merging

    • Nuclear reactions

    • Perfectly Matched Layers

    • NewParticles diagnostic

  • In preparation:

    • Spectral solvers

Release 5.1

  • GPU:

    • 1Dcartesian geometry now available.

    • Compilation simplified and better documented.

    • Improved performance of particle sorting.

  • Features:

    • Relativistic field initialization now supports multiple species and both direction propagations.

    • Added the argument phase_offset in laser definitions such as LaserGaussian2D.

    • The LaserGaussianAM definition will only use one coordinate for its focus argument (the transverse coordinate of the focus in this geometry is zero).

    • Small improvements in PML for envelope model (AM and 2D).

    • Deprecated smilei_rand_max.

    • New namelist variables smilei_omp_threads and smilei_total_cores.

  • Happi:

    • In Scalar, it is now possible to make an operation on scalars such as "Uelm+Ukin".

    • The list of available scalars can be obtained from getScalars().

    • New arguments xoffset and yoffset to shift plot coordinates.

    • New argument timestep_indices as an alternative to timesteps.

    • Changed coordinate reference for 2D probe in 3D or AM geometry (zero is the box origin projected orthogonally on the probe plane).

  • Documentation:

    • Dark theme (click the switch on the bottom left, or set browser preferences).

  • Bug fixes :

    • dump_minutes often failed to write some checkpoint files.

    • "auto" limits in ParticleBinning could fail with only one side on "auto".

    • CFL condition is more accurately determined in AMcylindrical and the feature timestep_over_CFL should be more reliable in that geometry.

Release 5.0

  • GPU support (not all features are supported at the moment)

    • Both AMD and Nvidia GPUs

    • Cartesian geometry in 2D and in 3D

    • Moving Window

    • Diagnostics: Field, Probes, Scalar, ParticleBinning, TrackParticles

Release 4.8

  • LaserEnvelope model:

    • Now compatible with PML boundaries

    • In AMcylindrical geometry, the number of modes can be greater than 1 (only affects electromagnetic fields and the densities, not envelope or susceptibility)

    • multi-level tunnel ionization creates multiple electrons, improving the sampling

  • Diagnostics

    • Much faster DiagFields (speedup ~ x3)

    • DiagFields and DiagProbe: new parameter datatype

    • DiagPerformances: new parameter cumulative

  • Collisions: new parameter time_frozen

  • Species: in AMcylindrical geometry, the initial drift velocity profiles may be defined either in the x,r,θ directions with mean_velocity_AM or in the x,y,z directions with mean_velocity.

  • Lasers: changed the delay and phase of gaussian lasers at high incidence to make them consistent between boundaries.

  • Happi:

    • Operations in Fields, Probe, and ParticleBinning may now accept physical constants, units, or basic functions such as exp() or sin()

    • Probe has a new method changeField

    • Open has a new argument pint to disable the Pint package

    • multiPlot and multiSlide have a new argument legend_font

    • The title can be formatted with a placeholder for the current time in an animation

    • Various performance improvements

  • Friedman filter: now available in geometries 1Dcartesian and AMcylindrical (previously available only in 2Dcartesian)

  • Lehe solver for Maxwell equations now available in AMcylindrical geometry

  • Bugfixes:

    • Compilation fixed for the newest version of GNU make

    • Poisson Solver correction was not properly accounted for with SDMD

    • Bug correction using Monte-Carlo radiation and multiphoton Breit-Wheeler processes with checkpoints

    • C++11 compilation issue

    • Reading particle weights and momenta from hdf5 file

    • PML are now compatible with dynamic load balancing.

    • solved segfault with Multiphoton Breit-Wheeler process in AMcylindrical geometry

    • Collisional ionization incorrect for \(Z^\star = Z-1\)

    • Field.getAxis was not accounting for the timestep

    • Bug correction in 1D relativistic Poisson solver

  • Experimental

    • B-TIS3 interpolation scheme to reduce the effects of numerical Cherenkov radiation is implemented up to interpolation order 2

    • New diagnostic: DiagNewParticles records particle information when they are created by ionization or other mechanisms

  • For developers: new table management for Monte-Carlo physical processes (transparent to users)

Release 4.7

  • Perfectly Matched Layers boundary conditions for EM fields (+2D Cartesian benchmark).

  • Improved performance for ARM-based processors including the Fujitsu A64FX

  • Improved performance for GNU, LLVM, arm-clang and Fujitsu compilers on all types of architectures

  • Lasers can be injected from all boundaries

  • Flag ponderomotive_dynamics removed from Species block. All Species interact with LaserEnvelope if present

  • Option to create neutrons for D-D fusion

  • Collisions can be done less often

  • Lasers can be injected from all boundaries

  • New 4th-order non-standard FDTD solver M4

  • Timestep dependent field interpolation scheme

  • LaserOffset:

    • may be re-used from a previous simulation

    • available from ymin, ymax, zmin and zmax

    • has new arguments fft_time_window and fft_time_step

  • Diagnostics:

    • Probes can include components of the Poynting vector PoyX, PoyY, PoyZ

    • Probes can be time-integrated

    • ParticleBinning diagnostics may accept "auto" as axis limits

    • Particle IDs may be modified in the DiagTrackParticles.filter (8 available bits)

    • Screens may have a cylinder shape

    • Scalar diagnostics for AM geometry now available

    • happi ParticleBinning now uses the keyword average instead of sum

  • Bugfixes:

    • Poynting scalars behaviour with several patches, or with checkpoints

    • Densities too low are put to 0 to avoid underflow

    • Prescribed fields in 2D

    • ellipticity = -1. was doing +1.

    • Setting units in happi’s TrackParticles was wrong (for plotting only)

    • Current communication correction for FIR filters

    • Fix for particle merging segmentation fault in spherical and Cartesian modes

    • Tracked particles with the vectorized mode

    • momentum_initialization from a file did not take the proper file

Release 4.6

  • Single-domain multiple decompositions

  • New 4th-order non-standard FDTD solver Bouchard for 2D and 3D geometries

  • New method for current filtering with a user-provided FIR kernel for 1D, 2D and 3D geometries

  • Diagnostics may now have a name (useful during post-processing)

  • Laser Envelope:

    • linear and circular polarization

    • ionization model

    • normalized laser frequency can be different from 1

  • Particles can be imported from a file

  • Some Profiles can be imported from a file

  • Coulomb logarithm may be multiplied by a constant factor

  • Happi:

    • handles fonts

    • time slider available with multiple plotting

    • vsym option for symmetric graph

    • getXmoved now accounts for requested units

    • Tracked particles can be selected before sorting

  • Bugfixes:

    • Fix in the vectorized projection at order 4

    • Photons could not be read from numpy array

    • DiagFields with time_average did not work for densities

    • Prescribed fields caused unstable real fields

    • Initialisation from numpy or hdf5 caused wrong weights in AM geometry

    • Better positionning of collisionally-ionised electrons

    • Fix segfault from thermalizing boundary

    • Running a simulation displayed the wrong version v4.4

Release 4.5

  • Changes:

    • Current filtering with adjustable number of passes per dimension

    • Improved axial boundary conditions for AMcylindrical geometry

    • Units in RadiationSpectrum diagnostic are more consistent with that of ParticleBinning

    • Ionisation current at fourth order of interpolation

    • Correction for Binary collisions & reactions as suggested in [Higginson2020]

  • Bugfixes:

    • PrescribedField was sometimes not applied by some OpenMP threads

    • Scalar Ukin_bnd was sometimes wrong with load balancing

    • Scalar Urad was sometimes wrong with moving window

    • On some systems, particles IDs were incorrect with ionization

Release 4.4

  • Changed radiation tables: see the doc.

    • Old tables are not valid anymore, input files must be updated.

    • Default tables are now embebded in the code

    • Possibility to read external generated by an external tool (more efficient and stable)

  • New RadiationSpectrum diagnostics available (see the doc)

  • AMcylindrical: sorting, documentation, subgrid in DiagFields, species-related currents and density in probes (not per mode anymore)

  • LaserOffset is not recomputed after restart

  • Prescribed fields that only contribute to pushing particles

  • Laser Envelope: added envelope equation solver with reduced numerical dispersion

  • Bugfixes:

    • Weight-initialization bug in AM geometry when a species was initialized on top of a regularly-initialized species

    • LaserOffset was off sideways and temporally by a couple of cells

    • Do not project twice a frozen species

    • Probes for species faulty when 4th order of interpolation

    • Checkpoints restart_number=0 was not used

    • Checkpointing with dump_minutes could be out of sync between MPI process

    • Prevent deadlock when restart files are corrupted

    • Checkpoints file_grouping had typo with python3

    • Scalar Ukin for ions was incorrect, thus Ubal was also wrong

    • happi had incorrect unit conversion with a sum of two fields

    • fix error occurring when envelope Probes on axis are used in AM geometry

Release 4.3

  • AMcylindrical : envelope, ionization, additional diagnotics, number of ppc per direction, binomial current filter, poisson solver, non-separable laser initialization per mode, improved diag field nomenclature

  • Particle injector

  • More control over the moving window movement

  • More control over the regular position initialization in Cartesian geometries

  • Bugfixes:

    • ionization of frozen species

    • particle binning was not following the moving window

    • gaussian profile with order 0 was incorrect

    • tracked particles post-processing was incorrect above 20M particles

    • better management of particle binning in collisions

    • Intel 19 optimizations

Release 4.2

  • AMcylindrical geometry with azimuthal Fourier decomposition (beta version)

  • Different convention for circular polarization amplitude

  • 1D and 2D laser envelope model

  • Compatibility between various ionization and QED models

  • Bugfixes:

    • Binomial filter in Cartesian 3D parallel implementation

    • Various crashes linked to vectorization

    • LaserGaussian2D when focused far from boundary

    • Laser a0 normalization to omega

    • Frozen particles are now properly ionized

    • Position initialization over another species with moving window

    • Tracked particles output was missing the mass factor for momenta

    • Breit-Wheeler pair production with fine grain sorted particles

Release 4.1

  • Probe diagnostics of currents and density per species

  • Field diagnostics with more than 2^32 points

  • Bugfixes:

    • collisions (badly affected by vectorization)

    • adaptive vectorization with dynamic load balancing

    • memory leak in the laser envelope model

  • Disable usage of -ipo to compile on supercomputers despite of saving time simulation

    • it needs too many resources (time and memory) to link

    • it is recommended to do some tests on a new supercomputer without and then to re-establish it

Warning

Since version 4.1, the definition of macro-particle weights has changed to ensure they do not depend on the cell volume. This impacts only the users working directly with values of weights. Other simulation results should be unchanged.

Release 4.0

  • Vectorization

  • Laser envelope model

  • MPI option MPI_THREAD_MULTIPLE is now optional (but recommended)

  • Faster collisions

  • Bugfixes: handling sum for happi’s ParticleBinning

Release 3.5

Release 3.4.1

  • Ionization considering a user-defined rate

Release 3.4

  • Compatibility with Python 3

  • New ‘Performances’ diagnostic

  • Tracked particles may output the fields at their location

  • ‘subgrid’ option in Fields diagnostics

  • Printout of the expected disk usage

  • Laser propagation pre-processing

  • More flexible domain decomposition

  • Relativistic initialization

  • Particles injection using Numpy arrays

  • Possibility to use user-defined ionization rates

  • Bugfixes: circular polarization, collisional ionization

Release 3.3

  • Major syntax changes in the namelist

  • QED radiation reaction

  • Monte-Carlo QED photon emission

  • Test mode to quickly check the namelist consistency

  • ParticleBinning and Screen diagnostics accept a python function as their deposited_quantity and axis.

  • Bugfixes: 4th order, field ionization

Release 3.2

  • New pushers (Vay’s and Higuera-Cary’s)

  • Numpy used for filtering track particles

  • Fourth order in 3D

  • Add some missing 3D features: external fields management, boundary conditions and non-neutral plasma initialization

  • OpenMP support in moving window

  • Tracked particles post-processing improved for large files

  • Bugfixes: energy computation in 3D or with moving window, random number seed

Release 3.1

  • Screen diagnostics

  • Exporting 3D diagnostics to VTK for reading in ParaView or VisIt

  • Partial support of the OpenPMD standard

  • Improvements: moving window (OpenMP), 3D projection

  • Bugfixes: tracked particles, walls, collisional ionization, etc.

Notes:

  • Outputs of Fields and Tracks are incompatible with 3.0

  • The input “output_dir” is not supported anymore

Release 3.0

  • 3D geometry

  • Field and scalar diagnostics improved for more flexibility and memory saving

  • Faster initialization (including Maxwell-Jüttner sampling)

  • Post-processing handles restarts

  • Bugfixes in checkpoints, timers, memory profile

Release 2.3

  • Post-processing scripts have been turned into a python module

  • Many bugfixes, such as addressing diagnostics efficiency

Release 2.2

  • state-of-the-art dynamic load balancing

  • full python namelist, allowing for complex, user-friendly input

  • external fields and antennas

  • binary Coulomb collisions

  • new diagnostics

  • python scripts for post-processing

Release 1.0

  • 1D & 2D cartesian geometries

  • Moving window

  • Hybrid MPI-OpenMP parallelization

  • Field ionization

  • Some python diagnostics