An Integrated Visual Exploration Approach to Particle Data Analysis

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 the authors 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.