Modeling of laser wakefield acceleration in Lorentz boosted frame using EM-PIC code with spectral solver

DOI10.1016/J.JCP.2014.02.016zbMATH Open1300.78012DBLPjournals/jcphy/YuXDAVTFLSM14arXiv1310.2622OpenAlexW2014107180WikidataQ59477561 ScholiaQ59477561MaRDI QIDQ398045FDOQ398045

Authors: Peicheng Yu, Xinlu Xu, Viktor K. Decyk, Weiming An, Jorge Vieira, Frank S. Tsung, Ricardo A. Fonseca, Luis O. Silva, Warren B. Mori, Wei Lü 

Publication date: 12 August 2014

Published in: Journal of Computational Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Simulating laser wakefield acceleration (LWFA) in a Lorentz boosted frame in which the plasma drifts towards the laser with $v_b$ can speedup the simulation by factors of $gamm{a}_b^2=(1-v_b^2/c^2{)}^{-1}$. In these simulations the relativistic drifting plasma inevitably induces a high frequency numerical instability that contaminates the interested physics. Various approaches have been proposed to mitigate this instability. One approach is to solve Maxwell equations in Fourier space (a spectral solver) as this has been shown to suppress the fastest growing modes of this instability in simple test problems using a simple low pass, ring (in two dimensions), or shell (in three dimensions) filter in Fourier space. We describe the development of a fully parallelized, multi-dimensional, particle-in-cell code that uses a spectral solver to solve Maxwell's equations and that includes the ability to launch a laser using a moving antenna. This new EM-PIC code is called UPIC-EMMA and it is based on the components of the UCLA PIC framework (UPIC). We show that by using UPIC-EMMA, LWFA simulations in the boosted frames with arbitrary $gamm{a}_b$ can be conducted without the presence of the numerical instability. We also compare the results of a few LWFA cases for several values of $gamm{a}_b$, including lab frame simulations using OSIRIS, a EM-PIC code with a finite difference time domain (FDTD) Maxwell solver. These comparisons include cases in both linear, and nonlinear regimes. We also investigate some issues associated with numerical dispersion in lab and boosted frame simulations and between FDTD and spectral solvers.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.2622

Recommendations

• Numerical simulations of laser wakefield accelerators in optimal Lorentz frames
• Enabling Lorentz boosted frame particle-in-cell simulations of laser wakefield acceleration in quasi-3D geometry
• QUICKPIC: a highly efficient particle-in-cell code for modeling wakefield acceleration in plasmas
• A new field solver for modeling of relativistic particle-laser interactions using the particle-in-cell algorithm
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zbMATH Keywords

particle-in-cellplasma simulationboosted frame simulationlaser wakefield acceleratornumerical Cerenkov instabilityspectral solver

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Lasers, masers, optical bistability, nonlinear optics (78A60) Statistical mechanics of plasmas (82D10) Spectral, collocation and related methods applied to problems in optics and electromagnetic theory (78M22)

Cites Work

• Numerical solution of initial boundary value problems involving maxwell's equations in isotropic media
• A domain decomposition method for pseudo-spectral electromagnetic simulations of plasmas
• Numerical instability due to relativistic plasma drift in EM-PIC simulations
• Numerical simulations of laser wakefield accelerators in optimal Lorentz frames
• Numerical stability of relativistic beam multidimensional PIC simulations employing the Esirkepov algorithm
• Principles and capabilities of 3-D, E-M particle simulations
• Skeleton PIC codes for parallel computers

Cited In (9)

• Enabling Lorentz boosted frame particle-in-cell simulations of laser wakefield acceleration in quasi-3D geometry
• Particle-in-cell modelling of laser-plasma interaction using Fourier decomposition
• A pseudospectral implicit particle-in-cell method with exact energy and charge conservation
• Implementation of a hybrid particle code with a PIC description in \(r\)-\(z\) and a gridless description in \(\phi\) into OSIRIS
• A new field solver for modeling of relativistic particle-laser interactions using the particle-in-cell algorithm
• A quasi-static particle-in-cell algorithm based on an azimuthal Fourier decomposition for highly efficient simulations of plasma-based acceleration: QPAD
• On numerical errors to the fields surrounding a relativistically moving particle in PIC codes
• A spectral, quasi-cylindrical and dispersion-free particle-in-cell algorithm
• Numerical simulations of laser wakefield accelerators in optimal Lorentz frames

Uses Software

• OSIRIS
• UPIC-EMMA

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