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High-Performance 3-D Simulation Code for Laser Plasma Accelerators and Plasma Processing of Integrated Circuits, with a Graphical User Interface--Tech-X Corporation, 1280 28th Street, Suite 2, Boulder, CO 80303-1758; 303-448-0727
Dr. David L. Bruhwiler, Principal Investigator
Dr. John R. Cary, Business Official
DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-99ER82903
Amount: $99,953
Laser plasma accelerators have demonstrated accelerating gradients many orders of magnitude higher than conventional metal structures, opening possibilities for much higher energy electron linacs. However, there are many non-linear, three-dimensional (3D) processes that can disrupt or limit particle acceleration; therefore, new 3-D parallel simulation tools are needed to fully understand these processes. This project will develop a flexible 3-D simulation code for modeling laser-plasma interactions using fluid, particle-in-cell (PIC) or hybrid fluid-PIC models. The code will have a graphical user interface (GUI) and will run on PC’s, Unix workstations, distributed clusters, and massively parallel supercomputers. In Phase I, a prototype, 2-D hybrid simulation of a short laser pulse in a long ionized channel will be implemented by integrating a fluid model with the existing PIC algorithms of the parallel XOOPIC code, with attention to the accuracy and stability of the hybrid algorithm. A prototype, 3-D, moving-window simulation of the same problem will be implemented using the parallel C++ POOMA framework.
Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The software should bring fluid, PIC, and hybrid modeling capabilities to designers of laser plasma accelerators. It should also be applicable to the 3-D simulation of plasma etching processes, critical to the computer chip industry.