Huge as a tennis court, performing a maximum of 550 petaflops (550 million billion) calculations per second, and ecologically powered – this is the LUMI (Large Unified Modern Infrastructure) supercomputer, which is the only one on the Old Continent enabling calculations beyond the capabilities of most researchers.

Poland is one of the ten countries forming a consortium that enables its members to conduct research based on high performance computing. During the pilot phase of LUMI GPU at the end of 2022, one of the projects submitted by Poland was the concept by Prof. Gabriel Wlazłowski titled "Turbulent Dynamics in Superfluid Fermi Systems". Its aim was to investigate complex quantum mechanical problems, with particular emphasis on quantum turbulence occurring in superfluids. Particular attention was devoted to fermions, with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of the processes taking place inside neutron stars.

Numerical simulations of quantum systems remain technically challenging. This mainly applies to systems composed of particles governed by the Pauli principle, which forbids two fermions from occupying the same quantum state. To understand the behavior of the entire system, one needs to track all quantum states. This generates a substantial computational demand, which has been the main bottleneck for researchers in this field. As part of the pilot grant, it became possible to conduct a simulation of quantum systems, where the number of particles under consideration reached hundreds of thousands. Only such large systems offer a chance to understand the properties of superfluid systems and the conditions under which flows change their state from laminar to turbulent, which is essential in the context of future applications.

For more information about LUMI and the pilot project, please visit www.lumi-supercomputer.eu.