ICAP2012 - List of Authors (Hallman, E.J.)

Paper

Title

Page

Low Noise Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Laser Plasma Accelerator 10 GeV Stages

78

E. Cormier-Michel, D.L. Bruhwiler, J.R. Cary, B.M. Cowan, E.J. Hallman
Tech-X, Boulder, Colorado, USA
E. Esarey, C.G.R. Geddes, W. Leemans, C.B. Schroeder, J.-L. Vay
LBNL, Berkeley, California, USA

Funding: Work supported by DOE/HEP, under grants DE-SC0004441 and DE-FC02-07ER41499, including use of NERSC under DE-AC02-05CH11231.
Because of their ultra-high accelerating gradient, laser plasma based accelerators (LPA) are contemplated for the next generation of high-energy colliders and light sources. The upcoming BELLA project will explore acceleration of electron bunches to 10 GeV in a 1 meter long plasma, where a wakefield is driven by a PW-class laser. Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are used to design the upcoming experiments where boosted frame simulations are used to model the full scale stages. As criteria on energy spread and beam emittance become more stringent, PIC simulations become more challenging as high frequency noise artificially increases those quantities. We show that calculating the beam self-fields using a static Poisson solve in the beam frame dramatically reduces particle noise, allowing for more accurate simulation of the beam evolution. In particular, this method gets correct cancellation of the transverse self-electric and magnetic fields of the beam, eliminating artificial self-forces, which is usually not true when using the standard PIC algorithm based on the staggered (“Yee”) electromagnetic field solver.

Slides TUSBC2 [5.989 MB]

Paper	Title	Page
TUSBC2	Low Noise Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Laser Plasma Accelerator 10 GeV Stages	78
	E. Cormier-Michel, D.L. Bruhwiler, J.R. Cary, B.M. Cowan, E.J. Hallman Tech-X, Boulder, Colorado, USA E. Esarey, C.G.R. Geddes, W. Leemans, C.B. Schroeder, J.-L. Vay LBNL, Berkeley, California, USA
	Funding: Work supported by DOE/HEP, under grants DE-SC0004441 and DE-FC02-07ER41499, including use of NERSC under DE-AC02-05CH11231. Because of their ultra-high accelerating gradient, laser plasma based accelerators (LPA) are contemplated for the next generation of high-energy colliders and light sources. The upcoming BELLA project will explore acceleration of electron bunches to 10 GeV in a 1 meter long plasma, where a wakefield is driven by a PW-class laser. Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are used to design the upcoming experiments where boosted frame simulations are used to model the full scale stages. As criteria on energy spread and beam emittance become more stringent, PIC simulations become more challenging as high frequency noise artificially increases those quantities. We show that calculating the beam self-fields using a static Poisson solve in the beam frame dramatically reduces particle noise, allowing for more accurate simulation of the beam evolution. In particular, this method gets correct cancellation of the transverse self-electric and magnetic fields of the beam, eliminating artificial self-forces, which is usually not true when using the standard PIC algorithm based on the staggered (“Yee”) electromagnetic field solver.
	Slides TUSBC2 [5.989 MB]