Local computational resources are vital for Linnaeus University

“In general, I think it is of capital importance for Linnaeus University to build local infrastructure. It is important that the university in the coming years becomes more and more visible in the research panorama in Sweden, and this can be done only if research infrastructure is available”, says Yvonne Becherini, head of the Astroparticle Physics research group and associate professor of physics.

The Astroparticle Physics (AP) research group uses the university’s High-Performance Computing Center (HPCC) to perform so-called Monte Carlo simulations of the response of their ALTO detector to cosmic gamma-rays and protons. ALTO is a Linnaeus University project aiming to install a gamma-ray observatory in the Southern hemisphere.

Very important

“For our group, the presence of local computing is very important for the study of the expected performance of our cosmic gamma-ray detector. It is very probable that soon we will also start to analyse real data coming from our prototype detectors installed on the campus in Växjö, but for this, we might need more manpower joining our group”, says Yvonne Becherini.

With a grant from the Royal Physiographic Society of Lund (the Märta and Eric Holmberg Endowment) and a smaller grant from the Magnus Bergvall’s Foundation, AP was able to purchase the addition of a server in the HPCC cluster. But it is not only hardware that is of importance for the research.

“The simulations are quite CPU consuming and in this regard I am happy to announce that we will start a collaboration with Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, BTH, on the optimisation of our simulation code”, says Yvonne Becherini.