An integrated visual exploration approach to particle data analysis

Abstract

Abstract—Particle simulations are powerful tools for understanding the complex phenomena associated with many areas of physics research, including confined plasma and high energy particle beams. The simulations are conducted on massively parallel computers, and the results provide minimal deviation from kinetic equations. Analyzing the data, however, presents a challenge due to the large quantity of particles, variables, and time steps. In this paper we describe a data exploration system that visualizes time-varying, multivariate point-based data from gyrokinetic particle simulations. By utilizing two modes of interaction–physical space and variable space–the system allows scientists to explore collections of densely packed particles and discover interesting features within the data. While single variables can be easily explored through the use of a one dimensional transfer function, we turn to the information visualization approach of parallel coordinates for interactively selecting particles in multivariate space. In this manner, particles with deeper connections can be separated from the rest of the data and then rendered using sphere glyphs and pathlines. From the results of this system, scientists at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have been able to easily identify features of interest, such as the location and motion of particles that become trapped in turbulent plasma flow. The combination of scientific and information visualization techniques provides an easy way to analyze complex collections of particles. Index Terms—Particle visualization, multivariate visualization, user interfaces, parallel coordinates.