Continuum multi-physics modeling with scripting languages: the Nsim simulation compiler prototype for classical field theory

We demonstrate that for a broad class of physical systems that can be described using classical field theory, automated runtime translation of the physical equations to parallelized finite-element numerical simulation code is feasible. This allows the implementation of multiphysics extension modules to popular scripting languages (such as Python) that handle the complete specification of the physical system at script level. We discuss two example applications that utilize this framework: the micromagnetic simulation package "Nmag" as well as a short Python script to study morphogenesis in a reaction-diffusion model.