Paper | Title | Page |
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WESEPP03 | High-Order Algorithms for Simulation of Laser Wakefield Accelerators | 230 |
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Funding: This work is funded by the US DOE Office of Science, Office of High Energy Physics, including use of NERSC. Electromagnetic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) experiments have shown great success recently, qualitatively capturing many exciting features, like the production of ~1 GeV electron beams with significant charge, moderate energy spread and remarkably small emittance. Such simulations require large clusters or supercomputers for full-scale 3D runs, and all state-of-the art codes are using similar algorithms, with 2nd-order accuracy in space and time. Very high grid resolution and, hence, a very large number of time steps are required to obtain converged results. We present preliminary results from the implementation and testing of 4th-order algorithms, which hold promise for dramatically improving the accuracy of future LWFA simulations. |