DISCO: Drift Orbit Simulation Code

Note

Warning: this code is under active development, and the API will change. Please check back later or contact the author if you plan to use this code.

DISCO is a tool for magnetospheric particle trajectory modeling, also known as particle tracing, on the GPU. It calculates the trajectories of particles using guiding center theory with full support for relativistic effects. The tool operates on magnetic and electric fields on MHD output and user-provided initial conditions.

Currently DISCO supports tracing in output from the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF), and support for MAGE is planned.

• Release History
  • Full Changelog
• User’s Guide
  • Examples
  • Guiding Center Methodology
  • Regridding Methodology
• Developer Guide
  • Installing for development
  • Code Standards
  • Linting and Code Formatting
  • Testing and Coverage
  • Documentation
  • Releases
• Reference/API
  • disco Package
  • disco.readers Module

Install DISCO

To install disco from PyPI, you can use the following command. If you are not using CUDA v12, replace cupy-cuda12x with cupy (this will build CuPy from source).

pip install disco-magnetosphere cupy-cuda12x

Brief Tour

import disco
from disco.readers import SwmfOutFieldModelDataset
from astropy import units

# Set initial conditions and dataset  ---------------------
particle_state = disco.ParticleState(
   x, y, z, ppar, magnetic_moment, mass, charge
)
dataset = SwmfOutFieldModelDataset('swmf_run/*.out')

field_model_loader = disco.DynamicFieldModelLoader(
   dataset, config, mass, charge
)

config = disco.TraceConfig(t_final = 30 * units.s, output_freq = 1)

# Do particle trace ---------------------------------------
history = disco.trace_trajectory(
   config, particle_state, field_model_loader
)

history.save('DiscoTrajectoryOutput.h5')

# Plot Results --------------------------------------------
history.plot_xz()
plt.savefig('xz_plot.png')