Simulation of a Next Generation Plasma Accelerator

Supercomputer simulations of plasma-based accelerators typically use a “moving window” to restrict the simulation area to a “small” region of interest that encompasses the laser beam and the portion of wakefield that accelerates the electron beam. In this simulation, a laser beam (red and blue disks) propagating through an under-dense plasma displaces electrons, creating a wake that supports very high electric fields, or “wakefield” (pale blue and yellow), that can be used to accelerate a short electron beam (white) to high-energy over a very short distance. While the simulation box is spatially much smaller, the number of time steps that are required to simulate the crossing of the laser through the plasma is still very large, typically over a million. (Credit: Jean-Luc Vay/Berkeley Lab)