Simulation and visualisation of astrophysical plasmas with smoothed particle magnetohydrodynamics

Abstract

A numerical implementation of the equations of magnetohydrodynamics has been developed using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method. Self gravitational forces have been included using the Barnes-Hut octree algorithm. A nearest neighbour search algorithm has been devised which links adjacent, spatially exclusive nodes from a spatial decomposition tree to create a mesh facilitating efficient searching. Visualisations of SPH fluids were created using Delaunay triangulation with particles serving as triangle vertices.