NPAC Technical Report SCCS-193
Hierarchical Tree-Structures as Adaptive Meshes
David Edelsohn
Submitted November 1 1991
Abstract
New adaptive mesh refinement algorithms provide an opportunity to utilize
the same hierarchical tree-structures developed for multipole-based
particle simulations in grid-based simulations of both continuum and
particle problems. Representing both a multipole method simulation and an
adaptive mesh simulation with this same structure provides a natural
formalism with which to unite these two classes of solvers. This paper
discusses how both methods exploit the same basic principle of locality
evident in many systems, such as those governed by Poisson's Equation, and
introduces issues and potential problems to be addressed in an
implementation. The locality of the systems and the resulting algorithms
provide important benefits for implementations on massively parallel
computers.