Flash code: studying astrophysical thermonuclear flashes

The Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes is constructing a new generation of codes designed to study runaway thermonuclear burning on the surface or in the interior of evolved compact stars. The center has completed the first version of Flash, Flash-1, which addresses various astrophysics problems. Flash-1 represents a major advance toward a fully flexible code for solving general astrophysical fluid dynamics problems. Flash-1 is modular and adaptive and operates in parallel computing environments. It was designed to let users configure initial and boundary conditions, change algorithms, and add new physical effects with minimal effort. It uses the Paramesh library to manage a block-structured adaptive grid, placing resolution elements only where needed most. It also uses the message passing interface (MPI) library to achieve portability and scalability on a variety of different message passing parallel computers.