What is it about?

Laser wakefield accelerators promise to be the compact electron and x-ray sources of the future, but their design and optimization rely heavily on simulation. We demonstrate that the use of a customized solver reproduces experimental results much more reliably than standard simulation methods, yielding accurate results with a ~6x reduction in computational resources.

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Why is it important?

We show substantial differences between simulation results using the customized solver and using standard methods. Future facilities and current experiments are being designed based on today’s simulation results, and the improved accuracy that we demonstrate will help inform these decisions.

Perspectives

I was excited to write this article based on the distinct differences we observed from early simulations using the customized solver. It is important to have confidence in one's computational modeling, and I certainly enjoyed seeing the improved agreement with experiment. We had valuable input from all co-authors to make this a great paper.

Dr. Kyle G Miller
University of Rochester

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Accurate simulation of direct laser acceleration in a laser wakefield accelerator, Physics of Plasmas, July 2023, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0152383.
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