PLUTO: A Numerical Code for Computational Astrophysics

By Andrea Mignone, Gianluigi Bodo, Silvano Massaglia, Titos Matsakos, O. Tesileanu, C. Zanni, A. Ferrari. 2007

1,202 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present a new numerical code, PLUTO, for the solution of hypersonic flows in 1, 2, and 3 spatial dimensions and different systems of coordinates. The code provides a multiphysics, multialgorithm modular environment particularly oriented toward the treatment of astrophysical flows in presence of discontinuities. Different hydrodynamic modules and algorithms may be independently selected to properly describe Newtonian, relativistic, MHD, or relativistic MHD fluids. The modular structure exploits a general framework for integrating a system of conservation laws, built on modern Godunov-type shock-capturing schemes. Although a plethora of numerical methods has been successfully developed over the past two decades, the vast majority shares a common discretization recipe, involving three general steps: a piecewise polynomial reconstruction followed by the solution of Riemann problems at zone interfaces and a final evolution stage. We have checked and validated the code against several benchmarks available in literature. Test problems in 1, 2, and 3 dimensions are discussed.

Subfields: Applied Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Computational Mechanics

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Citations in the corpus

MHD simulations of accretion onto a dipolar magnetosphere - II. Magnetospheric ejections and stellar spin-down (2012, methodology): “We employed the MHD module provided with the PLUTO code1 (Mignone et al. 2007) to solve the system of Eqs.”
E pur si muove: Galilean-invariant cosmological hydrodynamical simulations on a moving mesh (2009, methodology): “This scheme is also popular in astronomy and used in several state-of-the art Eulerian codes (e.g. Fromang et al., 2006; Mignone et al., 2007; Cunningham et al., 2009).”
FORMATION OF MASSIVE PRIMORDIAL STARS: INTERMITTENT UV FEEDBACK WITH EPISODIC MASS ACCRETION (2015, methodology): “Simulation Overview and Numerical Configuration We use a modified version of the public multidimensional magneto-hydrodynamics code PLUTO 3.0 (Mignone et al. 2007).”
The Athena++ Adaptive Mesh Refinement Framework: Design and Magnetohydrodynamic Solvers (2020, methodology): “While this speedup from mesh refinement is slightly lower than that reported for the PLUTO code (Mignone et al. 2012, table 3), this is in part because the run time on a uniform mesh is significantly lower using Athena++. 4.3.2.”
CIRCUMVENTING THE RADIATION PRESSURE BARRIER IN THE FORMATION OF MASSIVE STARS VIA DISK ACCRETION (2010, methodology): “(16) Such external gravity (from point sources) is supported in Pluto3 by defining the gravitational potential Φ∗ or the resulting acceleration vector a2.”
Equation of state in relativistic magnetohydrodynamics: variable versus constant adiabatic index (2007, methodology): “(1) has been achieved using the PLUTO code (Mignone et al. 2007) in §4.1, §4.2 and HARM (Gammie et al. 2003) in §4.3.”
Relativistic jet feedback – III. Feedback on gas discs (2018, methodology): “The simulations have been carried out using the relativistic hydrodynamic module of the publicly available PLUTO code (Mignone et al. 2007).”
THREE-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATION OF MASSIVE STAR FORMATION IN THE DISK ACCRETION SCENARIO (2011, methodology): “The evolution of the gas density ρ, velocity ~u, pressure P , and total energy density E is computed using the open source magnetohydrodynamics code Pluto3 (Mignone et al. 2007), including full tensor viscosity.”
Athena: A New Code for Astrophysical MHD (2008, methodology): “Athena is neither the first nor the onlyMHD code based on these methods which is designed for use with AMR; others include RIEMANN (Balsara 2000), BATS-R-US (Powell et al. 1999; Gombosi et al. 2004), AMRVAC (Tóth1996; Nool & Keppens 2002), Nirvana (Ziegler 2005), RAMSES (Fromang et al. 2006), PLUTO”
yt: A MULTI-CODE ANALYSIS TOOLKIT FOR ASTROPHYSICAL SIMULATION DATA (2010, neutral): “We also hope to work with other research groups to add support for the visualization and analysis of output from other popular astrophysics simulation codes such as ART, Gadget, Pluto (Mignone et al. 2007), and ZEUS-MP (Hayes et al. 2006).”
A new class of accurate, mesh-free hydrodynamic simulation methods (2014, methodology): “Specifically, we will employ a second-order accurate (in space and time) MUSCL-Hancock type scheme (van Leer 1984; Toro 1997), as used in state-of-the-art grid methods such as Fromang et al. (2006); Mignone et al. (2007); Cunningham et al. (2009); Springel (2010); Teyssier (2002).”
Relativistic jet feedback in high-redshift galaxies – I. Dynamics (2016, methodology): “We perform 3D relativistic hydrodynamic simulations using the PLUTO code’s Relativistic Hydrodynamic (RHD) module (Mignone et al. 2007).”
Gaps, Rings, and Non-Axisymmetric Structures in Protoplanetary Disks - From Simulations to ALMA Observations (2014, methodology): “We use the constrained transport module which conserves ∇ · B = 0 to machine precision (Mignone et al. 2007).”
THE OBSERVABLE SIGNATURES OF GRB COCOONS (2016, methodology): “The energy per baryon varies between the different regions in 5 The simulations we use here were preformed using the public code PLUTO (Mignone et al. 2007) and are taken from Harrison et al. (in preparation). the cocoon.”
The cocoon emission - an electromagnetic counterpart to gravitational waves from neutron star mergers (2017, methodology): “We carry out the numerical simulations using the special relativistic hydrodynamical module of the code PLUTO, version 4.0 (Mignone et al. 2007).”
Thanatology in protoplanetary discs - The combined influence of Ohmic, Hall, and ambipolar diffusion on dead zones (2014, methodology): “effect In this Appendix we detail the modifications made to the Pluto code (v4.”
A simple unsplit Godunov method for multidimensional MHD (2009, methodology): “…1999; Tóth, 2000,; Dedner et al., 2002; Pen et al., 2003; Londrillo and Del Zanna, 2004; Ziegler, 2004; Crockett et al., 2005; Fromang et al., 2006; Mignone et al., 2007; Cunningham et al., 2007), primarily because such methods are very good for shock capturing, and flows involving contact and/or…”