This is a Python package for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) mainly - but not exclusively - for plasma physics.
STRUPHY stands for STRUcture-Preserving HYbrid code (or STRUcture-preserving PHYsics code). The package provides off-the-shelf models for plasma physics problems, such as
- Maxwell's equations
- Magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD)
- Vlasov-Poisson and Vlasov-Maxwell kinetic models
- Drift-kinetic models for strongly magnetized plasma
- MHD-kinetic hybrid models
All models can be run on multiple cores through MPI (distributed memory) and OpenMP (shared memory). The compute-intensive parts of the code are translated and compiled ("transpiled") using pyccel, giving you the speed of Fortran or C while working within the familiar Python environment.
| Particles in a Tokamak (model "Vlasov") |
Toroidal Alfvén eigenmode (model "LinearMHDDriftKineticCC") |
|---|---|
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| Strong Landau damping (model "VlasovAmpereOneSpecies") |
Anisotropic diffusion (propagator "ImplicitDiffusion") |
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The code is freely available under an MIT license - Copyright (c) 2019-2025, Struphy developers, Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics.
Get familiar with Struphy right away on mybinder - no installation needed.
Quick install on your computer (using a virtual environment):
python -m venv struphy_env
source struphy_env/bin/activate
pip install -U pip
pip install -U struphy
struphy compile --status
struphy compile
In case you face troubles with install/compile:
- check the prerequisites
- visit trouble shooting
As an example, let's say we want to solve Maxwell's equations. We can use the CLI and generate a default launch file via
struphy params Maxwell
Hit yes when prompted - this will create the file params_Maxwell.py in your current working directory (cwd). You can open the file and - if you feel like it already - change some parameters, then run
python params_Maxwell.py
The default output is in sim_1/ in your cwd. You can change the output path via the class EnvironmentOptions in the parameter file.
Parallel simulations are run for example with
pip install -U mpi4py
mpirun -n 4 python params_Maxwell.py
You can also put the run command in a batch script.
The doc is on Github pages, we recommend in particular to visit:
- Issues
- Discussions
- @spossann stefan.possanner@ipp.mpg.de (Maintainer)
- @max-models Max.Lindqvist@ipp.mpg.de (Maintainer)
- LinkedIn profile
- S. Possanner, F. Holderied, Y. Li, B.-K. Na, D. Bell, S. Hadjout and Y. Güçlü, High-Order Structure-Preserving Algorithms for Plasma Hybrid Models, International Conference on Geometric Science of Information 2023, 263-271, Springer Nature Switzerland.