Stellarbox

Stellarbox is a 3D magnetohydrodynamics code used to simulate the upper part of the convection zone and the lower part of the atmosphere of the Sun and other stars. Equations for the conservation of mass, momentum, energy, and magnetic flux are advanced in time using a tabular equation of state and optical opacity specific to the chosen stellar composition.

The simulation domain is a rectangular volume typically encompassing a horizontal span of tens to hundreds of megameters and a vertical span of a few to tens of megameters. Spatial resolutions typically range from 100 kilometers (km) down to 5 km.

The simulations incorporate subgrid-scale turbulence models for the transport of heat and momentum and for electrical resistivity. Radiative heat transfer is simulated with a ray-tracing algorithm suited to parallel computation. Parallelization is achieved using either a planes-based or pencil-based data structure for given mesh dimensions and number of processors.