Simulations of a strongly three-dimensionally perturbed Z-pinch using MACH3 on a parallel computer

Summary form only given. The real world case of strong three-dimensional perturbations has become accessible via parallel computation using MACH3. We describe what we believe to be the first full 3-D simulation of a strongly perturbed solid-core plasma Z-pinch performed in parallel. The picture, from that simulation, shows the mass density at a time near greatest compression. The contour plots (on eight sections through the simulation region) are cut off at a density representing the surrounding vacuum, and the isosurface shown encloses the regions of highest density. The 4-fold azimuthal and 2-fold axial symmetry of the initial density perturbation-to 50% below the peak density-is clearly visible. That initial density extended only about one-third farther than the largest radius shown here. This simulation-containing 140,000 cells-took only ten hours on 20 processors of the 400 node IBM SP2 at the Maui High Performance Computing Center.