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Title: Modeling laser wakefield accelerator experiments with ultrafast particle-in-cell simulations in boosted frames

Journal Article · · Physics of Plasmas
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3358139· OSTI ID:21371215
; ; ;  [1]; ;  [2]
  1. GoLP/Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear-Laboratorio Associado, Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon (Portugal)
  2. University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095 (United States)

The development of new laser systems at the 10 Petawatt range will push laser wakefield accelerators to novel regimes, for which theoretical scalings predict the possibility to accelerate electron bunches up to tens of GeVs in meter-scale plasmas. Numerical simulations will play a crucial role in testing, probing, and optimizing the physical parameters and the setup of future experiments. Fully kinetic simulations are computationally very demanding, pushing the limits of today's supercomputers. In this paper, the recent developments in the OSIRIS framework [R. A. Fonseca et al., Lect. Notes Comput. Sci. 2331, 342 (2002)] are described, in particular the boosted frame scheme, which leads to a dramatic change in the computational resources required to model laser wakefield accelerators. Results from one-to-one modeling of the next generation of laser systems are discussed, including the confirmation of electron bunch acceleration to the energy frontier.

OSTI ID:
21371215
Journal Information:
Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 17, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.3358139; (c) 2010 American Institute of Physics; ISSN 1070-664X
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English