Synthetic remote-sensing observations of coronal mass ejections
PI: Peter Wyper Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the Sun are massive expulsions of plasma and magnetic field originating in the Sun’s atmosphere (the solar corona). They are the main driver of Space Weather around the Earth, and come in a variety of different morphologies. In a new study involving simulation data developed with Dirac […]
HPQCD: novel use of lattice QCD to constrain axion-like particles
PI: Christine Davies Axion-like particles (ALPs) frequently appear as light spinless particles in extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. How best to find them, if they exist, depends on their mass and the strength of their coupling to known particles. Figure 1. Diagrams showing how a vector meson, V (here the J/𝛙), decays […]
The impact of interior evolution on the atmospheric dynamics of hot and ultra-hot Jupiters
PI: Thaddeus Komacek Highlight 1: General Circulation Model (GCM) simulations of the first planet orbiting close-in to a pulsar characterised with the James Webb Space Telescope. Figure 1 (top): Temperature maps and streamlines (left) and temperature-pressure profiles (right) from 3D GCMs of PSR J2322-2650b. From Zhang et al. (2025), ApJL, 995:L64. Highlight 2: GCM simulations […]
Alfvén waves parametric decay in low-beta plasmas: application to Earth’s IonospherePI: Lorenzo
PI: Matteini Alfvén waves play a crucial role in the transport of energy in various magnetised laboratory, space and astrophysical plasmas. They are both linear and non-linear MHD solutions and can travel long distances along the background magnetic field, transporting and depositing energy far from the source. In the presence of compressible fluctuations however, Alfvén […]
Three-dimensional oscillatory magnetic reconnection in the solar atmosphere
PL: Luiz A.C. A. Schiavo, PCL: James A. McLaughlin, Gert J.J. Botha, and Natasha L.S. Jeffrey Solar flares are among the most powerful events in the solar system, releasing vast amounts of magnetic energy stored in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the solar corona. This energy release is driven by a fundamental process called magnetic reconnection, […]
Hadron Resonance from Lattice QCD
PI: Christopher Thomas The LHCb experiment at CERN has discovered an unprecedented number of new hadrons (bound states of quarks and gluons), around 70 to date. Many of these are seen as short-lived resonances decaying through the strong interaction to lighter, stable hadrons. Numerous of them lie at unexpected energies compared to what is predicted […]
Lattice studies of maximally supersymmetric Yang–Mills in three dimensions
PI: David Schaich DiRAC Project dp162/APP50526, “Lattice studies of maximally supersymmetric Yang–Mills in three dimensions”, is exploring conjectured holographic dualities that relate supersymmetric quantum field theories to quantum gravity in a higher number of space-time dimensions. Such holographic dualities are widely employed in theoretical physics, and are beginning to benefit from first-principles lattice field theory […]
Origins of the Water Ice Excavated by the Christmas Eve Crater Formation on Mars
PI: Gareth Collins On the 24th of December 2021, a bus-sized meteoroid struck the martian surface, producing a 150-m wide crater. The impact excavated an extensive field of m-scale blocks of water ice—the lowest-latitude water ice observed on Mars to date. We used 3D computer simulations of the formation of the crater performed on DiRAC […]
Leading and trailing spirals in planet-forming discs
PI: Richard Alexander Young stars are surrounded by cold discs of dust and gas, which form because gas clouds invariably “spin up” as they collapse to form stars. These so-called protoplanetary discs are the sites of exoplanet formation. In recent years observations with telescopes such as ALMA have revealed a wealth of structure in planet-forming […]
Planets from Building Blocks to Habitable Atmospheres
PI: Felix Sainsbury-Martinez The exo/astrochemistry group at the University of Leeds has been using Dirac HPC resources to study planet formation on multiple scales, from protoplanetary discs to planetary atmospheres, with a focus on the role that ices play. As of February 2026, we have two papers under-review with ApJ and two papers being prepared […]