ACCent

ACCent activities in FY '08 included workshops, community-building across the New Mexico Institutions, proposal development and investments in infrastructure.

Workshops, Schools

Four ACCent-sponsored workshops (two already held, one planned for November) have targeted the Dark frontier theme. ACCent also sponsored New Mexico student participation in New Mexico State University's (NMSU) 2008 Synthesis Imaging School.

• Cosmic Web Workshop. The aim of this meeting was to focus on selected topics related to galaxy formation in the context of large-scale distribution of matter in the Universe, the main topics being: galaxy formation and evolution, neutral hydrogen and reheating, the dynamics of large-scale structure, and large cosmological simulations. Follow this link for more information.
• 2008 Santa Fe Cosmology Summer Workshop. The three-week-long workshop covered current and expected observational advances, including the cosmic microwave background, large-scale structure galaxies and clusters, and dark matter and dark energy theory. Follow this link for more information.
• Great Surveys Workshop. This workshop takes an integrated view of next-generation surveys -- the next frontier of a large part of astrophysics and cosmology -- targeting unifying themes common to most of the next-generation surveys. Follow this link for more information.
• Workshop on Particle Physics and Cosmology The forthcoming ground- and space-based experiments (such as the Large Hadron Collider [LHC], PLANCK, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope [GLAST], and many dark matter direct and indirect detection experiments) motivate this series of workshops on particle physics and cosmology. This workshop considered issues related to the exploration of the connections between these two areas. link
• Synthesis Imaging School 2008 An eight-day workshop on interferometry techniques. link

Building partnerships

ACCent activities in this theme area included community building to generate new ideas and collaborations to target major opportunities. A good beginning has been made in the area of radio astronomy, by looking ahead to the data and scientific challenges posed by the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) and its precursor experiments (Carilli, Habib, Myers, Taylor). The idea of ACCent participation in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-III (SDSS-III) appears very natural, considering that the SDSS telescope is in New Mexico, and that Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and NMSU participated in SDSS-II. Despite enthusiasm for the overall idea from prospective participants at LANL (Habib, Heitmann, Pope) and NMSU (Anderson, Klypin, Murphy, Walterbos), no mechanism for defraying membership costs has yet been found, although the search continues. The recent decision by LANL to join the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) will also help ACCent-associated researchers to join the LSST Science Collaborations (possible without institutional membership) and have their interests represented on the LSST Board. As an example, John McGraw's group at the University of New Mexico (UNM) is already helping LSST better characterize their site in Chile; John has indicated his strong interest in appropriate LSST participation.

Proposal Development

Proposal-writing to external agencies under ACCent has so far followed a ground-up strategy, rather than a top-down strategy. The idea is to first identify, and then initiate, joint work before writing proposals. Hopefully this will lead not only to better proposals, but also to better-balanced collaborations (the SKA discussions mentioned above will be a part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) PetaApps proposal mentioned below).

Proposals in this theme area include a LANL proposal to the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of High Energy Physics (HEP) for FY 2008 funds with the aim of carrying out simulations in support of dark energy missions. The results of these simulations would be made public. We anticipate collaboration with the group of Anatoly Klypin at NMSU in the interpretation of these results. The proposal was funded at the requested level ($165~K). A $100~K proposal aiming to apply some recently-developed statistical methods to future NASA missions has been submitted to NASA's theory program. If funded, this too could involve non-LANL ACCent researchers.

A proposal to be submitted via a university/LANL/New Mexico Consortium (NMC) collaboration to an NSF PetaApps call is in an early planning phase. This proposal is based on using results from the first petascale cosmological simulation suite, LANL's Roadrunner Universe Project. Along with several other institutions, we expect participation in this proposal from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)/New Mexico Tech (NMT) and New Mexico State University (NMSU); details remain to be worked out.

Infrastructure

In the past year, ACCent has also moved into an office within the LANL Institutes space at the Research Park at Los Alamos and invested in a significant computer/storage platform that will be made available to researchers participating in ACCent/IAS activities. Large-scale computations are essential in both designing and interpreting next-generation surveys. Both the simulations and the surveys can easily generate data at rates that can swamp current hardware and software systems, thus a significant area of research has grown around approaches to tackle this problem. We are putting together computer and storage systems (both local and distributed) to study these issues in advance of the expected results from the Roadrunner Universe Project, and later from LSST. The IAS has invested in an important component of this work, via partial funding of a compact 128 CPU cluster that will be used in consort with a large storage system (currently 108 TB, but slated to double in size in FY '09). This system will be made available to ACCent and other IAS-sponsored projects as a unique resource. UC San Diego's Computational Astrophysics Data Analysis Center (CADAC) is a resource that is most similar in size and scope. Leveraged funding has been obtained to partially support a student (Kim McCormick of the University of New Mexico-Los Alamos [UNM-LA]) on this project.

ACCent Structure

Overall coordination is the responsibility of Salman Habib as the Center Leader, with the five institutional representatives being Przemyslaw Wozniak (ISR-1, LANL), Anatoly Klypin (Astronomy, NMSU), Steven T. Myers (NRAO), Lisa M. Young (Physics, NMT), and Gregory B. Taylor (Physics and Astronomy, UNM). In addition to LANL, NMSU, NMT, NRAO, and UNM, other NM-based universities, labs, or observatories, and selected external university and lab collaborators are expected to participate in ACCent-supported activities.

Conclusion

The first ACCent focus area has been launched with some success. However, work remains to be done in making the opportunities better known to (busy) university and LANL scientists. Work also remains in having the scientists take advantage of the opportunities. There is a substantial effort barrier in initiating new collaborations across institutions, especially as there may already be a history of institutional competition. Furthermore, the fact that ACCent support is limited to General and Administrative (G&A) and is also (typically) limited in total amount makes it difficult to cross the effort barrier. This makes identification of the right individuals and the right projects crucial. This is clearly the key task for ACCent in this focus area in the coming year.

Identification of a second focus area is also very important. Nuclear and stellar astrophysics appears to be a good candidates, perhaps combined with time-domain astronomy, with which it shares a strong synergy. Another interesting possibility is to look further afield and collaborate with university researchers in addressing broader problems that cut across several fields (such as large dataset analysis, data-intensive computing, etc.). Discussions with university colleagues at IAS-sponsored workshops indicate that this may be a viable direction.

ACCent Contacts

The following people should be contacted regarding ACCent activities in general. Others may be in charge of specific activities under ACCent, e.g., workshops, program development, and visitor programs.

• ACCent general information: Salman Habib, habib@lanl.gov, 505 667 5265
• Los Alamos National Laboratory: Przemyslaw (Przemek) Wozniak, wozniak@lanl.gov, 505 667 1381
• New Mexico State University: Anatoly Klypin, aklypin@nmsu.edu, 505 646 1400
• National Radio Astronomy Observatory: Steven T. Myers, smyers@nrao.edu, 575 835 7294 or 835 7000
• New Mexico Tech: Lisa M. Young, lyoung@physics.nmt.edu, 505 835 5104
• University of New Mexico: Gregory B. Taylor, gbtaylor@unm.edu, 505 277 5238
• IAS Leader for Astrophysics and Cosmology Kurt Anderson, kurt@nmsu.edu 505-646-1032

Other ACCent links

Major Facilities/Projects sited in New Mexico:

• Apache Point Observatory
  
• Long Wavelength Array
  
• Magdalena Ridge Observatory
  
• Milagro Gamma-Ray Observatory
  
• NRAO Very Large Array
  
• National Solar Observatory, Sacramento Peak
  
• Sloan Digital Sky Survey
  
• Thinking Telescopes/RAPTOR
  

Projects with New Mexico Institutional Participation

• Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope
  
• Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics
  
• Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission
  

New Mexico Research Group Pages:

• Dark Universe @ Los Alamos
  
• IGPP Los Alamos
  
• UNM Institute for Astrophysics