The stellar atmosphere simulation code Bifrost

Understand

Context: Numerical simulations of stellar convection and photospheres have been developed to the point where detailed shapes of observed spectral lines can be explained.

• Stellar atmospheres are very complex, and very different physical regimes are present in the convection zone, photosphere, chromosphere, transition region and corona.
• To understand the details of the atmosphere it is necessary to simulate the whole atmosphere since the different layers interact strongly.
• These physical regimes are very diverse and it takes a highly efficient massively parallel numerical code to solve the associated equations.