DCU student receives prestigious Institute of Physics award for ground-breaking thesis findings

A DCU student who spent five years devising new software code using graphics processing units has received top honours for his thesis.

Cathal Ó Broin, a native of Dún Laoghaire, Dublin received the Institute of Physics (IOP) Annual Thesis Award for Computational Physics. He received the award for his ground-breaking research which focussed on using computers to model what happens when ultrafast lasers are aimed at single atoms and molecules. Cathal, who holds a degree in Physics with Astronomy from DCU created all of the code from scratch and worked on a specific theory called the R-Matrix theory, under the supervision of Dr. Lampros Nikolopoulos, DCU Lecturer in the School of Physical Sciences.

It resulted in the development of a software code which uses the computational power of graphics cards. These graphics cards can be used to deliver performance greater than high-end CPUs (Central Processing Units) used in large-scale supercomputers. The new developments will allow calculations to be carried out with greater speed and efficiency. Running the code is also low-cost and it can be run on desktop sized systems and is extremely attractive to research industry practitioners. At present the computational resources to do the same simulations are costly and there is a reliance on using large-scale supercomputers.

The work allows physicists to investigate larger atoms and molecules with more extreme lasers than previously. Ultrafast lasers have a number of industrial and research applications from controlled ablation, plasma generation and control, biomolecule imaging, and to the study of fundamental physical processes. The Committee of the Institute of Physics Computational Group offers an annual thesis prize for the author of the PhD thesis that, in the opinion of the Committee, contributes most strongly to the advancement of computational physics.

Former award recipients of the IoP Thesis Award include graduates from Cambridge University, Oxford University and Imperial College, London. Cathal’s thesis entitled a New GPU-based Computational Framework for the Ab-initio Solution of the TDSE for Atomic and Molecular One-Electron Systems under Intense Ultra-Short Laser Fields beat off stiff competition from Ireland and the UK. The full details are available to view at http://doras.dcu.ie/20806/

The work was funded by the Seventh Framework Project and by a European Reintegration Grant (ERG 2010). Time at the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) was also used through the Full National Service.