Smilei wins Open Science awards for research software
On November 29, 2023, the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research awarded its "Science ouverte du logiciel libre de la recherche" prizes. The open source plasma simulation software Smilei, the result of a collaboration between researchers from Leprince-Ringuet laboratory for particle physics and astrophysics (LLR*) and Laboratoirepour l'Utilisation des Lasers Intenses (Intense Lasers Laboratory - LULI*), was one of the four winners of this second edition. It describes plasma dynamics using the "Particle-in-Cell" method, and is now used to simulate a wide variety of systems, including laser-plasma interactions, high-energy astrophysics and space physics. Its user community is largely international, and includes 2 other IP Paris laboratories: the Plasma Physics Laboratory (LPP*) and the Irradiated Solids Laboratory (LSI*). It is the result of close collaboration with experts in scientific computing, since such simulations are carried out on massively parallel supercomputers.