Engineering Papers⌕ Search

Engineering topics

Vay, J -L

Publications and source records attributed to Vay, J -L.

12 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2012

Toward fully self-consistent simulation of the interaction of E-Clouds and beams with WARP-POSINST

To predict the evolution of electron clouds and their effect on the beam, the high energy physics community has relied so far on the complementary use of 'buildup' and 'single/multi-bunch instability' reduced descriptions. The former describes the evolution of electron clouds at a given location in the ring, or 'station', under the influence of prescribed beams and external fields [1], while the latter (sometimes also referred as the 'quasi-static' approximation [2]) follows the interaction between the beams and the electron clouds around the accelerator with prescribed initial distributions of electrons, assumed to be concentrated at a number of discrete 'stations' around the ring. Examples of single bunch instability codes include HEADTAIL [3], QuickPIC [4, 5], and PEHTS [6]. By contrast, a fully self-consistent approach, in which both the electron cloud and beam distributions evolve simultaneously under their mutual influence without any restriction on their relative motion, is required for modeling the interaction of high-intensity beams with electron clouds for heavy-ion beam-driven fusion and warm-dense matter science. This community has relied on the use of Particle-In-Cell (PIC) methods through the development and use of the WARP-POSINST code suite [1, 7, 8]. The development of novel numerical techniques (including adaptive mesh refinement, and a new 'drift-Lorentz' particle mover for tracking charged particles in magnetic fields using large time steps) has enabled the first application of WARP-POSINST to the fully self-consistent modeling of beams and electron clouds in high energy accelerators [9], albeit for only a few betatron oscillations. It was recently observed [10] that there exists a preferred frame of reference which minimizes the number of computer operations needed to simulate the interaction of relativistic objects. This opens the possibility of reducing the cost of fully self-consistent simulations for the interaction of ultrarelativistic beams with electron cloud by orders of magnitude. The computational cost of the fully self-consistent mode is then predicted to be comparable to that of the quasi-static mode, assuming that several stations per betatron period are needed. During the workshop, there was some debate about the number of stations per betatron period that are needed when using the quasi-static mode. The argument was made that if there is less than one station per betatron period, then artificial resonances can be triggered and the resulting emittance growth provides an upper bound. The emittance growth thus obtained will fall either above or below the operational requirements of the machine. In the latter case, one can conclude that the electron effect that has been simulated is of no concern. However, if the emittance growth that was obtained is above the threshold, then the results become inconclusive, and simulations which resolve the betatron motion are then needed. In this case, according to [10], the fully self-consistent approach becomes an option. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether this option is indeed practical.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2011

Modeling of 10 GeV-1 TeV laser-plasma accelerators using Lorentz boosted simulations

Modeling of laser-plasma wakefield accelerators in an optimal frame of reference [J.-L. Vay, Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 130405 (2007)] allows direct and efficient full-scale modeling of deeply depleted and beam loaded laser-plasma stages of 10 GeV-1 TeV (parameters not computationally accessible otherwise). This verifies the scaling of plasma accelerators to very high energies and accurately models the laser evolution and the accelerated electron beam transverse dynamics and energy spread. Over 4, 5, and 6 orders of magnitude speedup is achieved for the modeling of 10 GeV, 100 GeV, and 1 TeV class stages, respectively. Agreement at the percentage level is demonstrated between simulations using different frames of reference for a 0.1 GeV class stage. Obtaining these speedups and levels of accuracy was permitted by solutions for handling data input (in particular, particle and laser beams injection) and output in a relativistically boosted frame of reference, as well as mitigation of a high-frequency instability that otherwise limits effectiveness.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2011

SPS Ecloud Instabilities - Analysis of Machine Studies and Implications for Ecloud Feedback

The SPS at high intensities exhibits transverse single bunch instabilities with signatures consistent with an Ecloud driven instability. We present recent MD data from the SPS, details of the instrument technique and spectral analysis methods which help reveal complex vertical motion that develops within a subset of the injected bunch trains. The beam motion is detected via wideband exponential taper striplines and delta-sigma hybrids. The raw sum and difference data is sampled at 50 GHz with 1.8 GHz bandwidth. Sliding window FFT techniques and RMS motion techniques show the development of large vertical tune shifts on portions of the bunch of nearly 0.025 from the base tune of 0.185. Results are presented via spectrograms and bunch slice trajectories to illustrate development of the unstable beam and time scale of development along the injected bunch train. The study shows that the growing unstable motion occupies a very broad frequency band of 1.2 GHz. These measurements are compared to numerical simulation results, and the system parameter implications for an Ecloud feedback system are outlined.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2011

INERTIAL FUSION DRIVEN BY INTENSE HEAVY-ION BEAMS

Intense heavy-ion beams have long been considered a promising driver option for inertial-fusion energy production. This paper briefly compares inertial confinement fusion (ICF) to the more-familiar magnetic-confinement approach and presents some advantages of using beams of heavy ions to drive ICF instead of lasers. Key design choices in heavy-ion fusion (HIF) facilities are discussed, particularly the type of accelerator. We then review experiments carried out at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) over the past thirty years to understand various aspects of HIF driver physics. A brief review follows of present HIF research in the US and abroad, focusing on a new facility, NDCX-II, being built at LBNL to study the physics of warm dense matter heated by ions, as well as aspects of HIF target physics. Future research directions are briefly summarized.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2011

Effects of hyperbolic rotation in Minkowski space on the modeling of plasma accelerators in a Lorentz boosted frame

The effects of hyperbolic rotation in Minkowski space resulting from the use of Lorentz boosted frames of calculation on laser propagation in plasmas are analyzed. Selection of a boost frame at the laser group velocity is shown to alter the laser spectrum, allowing the use of higher boost velocities. The technique is applied to simulations of laser driven plasma wakefield accelerators, which promise much smaller machines and whose development requires detailed simulations that challenge or exceed current capabilities. Speedups approaching the theoretical optima are demonstrated, producing the first direct simulations of stages up to 1 TeV. This is made possible by a million times speedup thanks to a frame boost with a relativistic factor {gamma}{sub b} as high as 1300, taking advantage of the rotation to mitigate an instability that limited previous work.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2011

Note on numerical study of the beam energy spread in NDCX-I

The kinetic energy spread (defined here as the standard deviation of the beam particle energies) sets the ultimate theoretical limit on the longitudinal compression that can be attained on NDCX-I and NDCX-II. Experimental measurements will inevitably include the real influences on the longitudinal phase space of the beam due to injector and accelerator field imperfections1. These induced energy variations may be the real limit to the longitudinal compression in an accelerator. We report on a numerical investigation of the energy spread evolution in NDCX-I; these studies do not include all the real imperfections, but rather are intended to confirm that there are no other intrinsic mechanisms (translaminar effects, transverse-longitudinal anisotropy instability, etc.) for significant broadening of the energy distribution. We have performed Warp simulations that use a realistic Marx voltage waveform which was derived from experimental measurements (averaged over several shots), a fully-featured model of the accelerating and focusing lattice, and new diagnostics for computing the local energy spread (and temperature) that properly account for linear correlations that arise from the discrete binning along each physical dimension (these capabilities reproduce and extend those of the earlier HIF code BPIC). The new diagnostics allow for the calculation of multi-dimensional maps of energy spread and temperature in 2-D axisymmetric or 3-D Cartesian space at selected times. The simulated beam-line was terminated at z = 3 m by a conducting plate, so as to approximately reproduce the experimental conditions at the entrance of the spectrometer that was used for mapping the longitudinal phase space. Snapshots of the beam projection and current, as well as the Marx waveform and history of beam kinetic energy collected at the end plate, are shown in Fig. 1. A two-dimensional axisymmetric map of energy spread from simulations of a typical NDCX-I configuration is shown in Fig. 2 (a). The energy spread starts at 0.1 eV at the source and rapidly rises to a few eV, then fluctuates between a fraction of an eV and tens of eV, ending near the exit in a range of a few eV at the outer edge of the beam to a few tens of eV near the axis. The higher value on-axis is associated with greater numerical noise there, due to the axisymmetric geometry of the calculation, resulting in poorer simulation-particle statistics at small radius. A scatter plot of the macroparticles kinetic energy (KE) versus radius (R) and longitudinal position (0.28 m < z < 3 m) colored by local energy spread is shown in Fig. 2 (b). As expected, there is a correlation of the kinetic energy with radius that is clearly visible at z = 2.8 m and vanishes at the metal plate at z = 3 m. More snapshots from simulations varying the time step, grid resolution and number of macroparticles are given in Appendix II. The macro-particles were collected at the exit plate and their kinetic energy history is plotted in Fig. 3 (left) and contrasted to an experimental measurement using a streak camera shown in Fig. 3. For some types of measurements, averaging over several pulses to improve signal-to-noise will contribute an additional spread that may not be present on any single beam pulse. The upper bound for the energy spread is in the range of a few 100 eV for the experiment while in the range of a few eV for the reported Warp simulations. The Marx voltage exhibits variations in the range of up to several hundreds of volts, playing a significant role in the experimentally measured energy spread, which may account for the difference between the experimental and the simulated bounds.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2010

Simulation of e-cloud driven instability and its attenuation using a simulated feedback system in the CERN SPS

Electron clouds have been shown to trigger fast growing instabilities on proton beams circulating in the SPS, and a feedback system to control the single-bunch instabilities is under active development. We present the latest improvements to the WARP-POSINST simulation framework and feedback model, and its application to the self-consistent simulations of two consecutive bunches interacting with an electron cloud in the SPS. Simulations using an idealized feedback system exhibit adequate mitigation of the instability providing that the cutoff of the feedback bandwidth is at or above 450 MHz. Artifacts from numerical noise of the injected distribution of electrons in the modeling of portions of bunch trains are discussed, and benchmarking of WARP against POSINST and HEADTAIL are presented.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2010

The BErkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA): A 10 GeV Laser Plasma Accelerator

An overview is presented of the design of a 10 GeV laser plasma accelerator (LPA) that will be driven by a PW-class laser system and of the BELLA Project, which has as its primary goal to build and install the required Ti:sapphire laser system for the acceleration experiments. The basic design of the 10 GeV stage aims at operation in the quasi-linear regime, where the laser excited wakes are largely sinusoidal and offer the possibility of accelerating both electrons and positrons. Simulations show that a 10 GeV electron beam can be generated in a meter scale plasma channel guided LPA operating at a density of about 10{sup 17} cm{sup -3} and powered by laser pulses containing 30-40 J of energy in a 50-200 fs duration pulse, focused to a spotsize of 50-100 micron. The lay-out of the facility and laser system will be presented as well as the progress on building the facility.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2010

E-Cloud Effects on Singe-Bunch Dynamics in the Proposed PS2

One of the options considered for future upgrades of the LHC injector complex entails the replacement of the PSwith the PS2, a longer circumference and higher energy synchrotron. Electron cloud effects represent an importantpotential limitation to the achievement of the upgrade goals. We report the results of numerical studies aimingat estimating the e-cloud density thresholds for the occurrence of single bunch instabilities.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2010

Effects of Hyperbolic Rotation in Minkowski Space on the Modeling of Plasma Accelerators in a Lorentz Boosted Frame

Laser driven plasma accelerators promise much shorter particle accelerators but their development requires detailed simulations that challenge or exceed current capabilities. We report the first direct simulations of stages up to 1 TeV from simulations using a Lorentz boosted calculation frame resulting in a million times speedup, thanks to a frame boost as high as gamma = 1300. Effects of the hyperbolic rotation in Minkowski space resulting from the frame boost on the laser propagation in the plasma is shown to be key in the mitigation of a numerical instability that was limiting previous attempts.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2010

Modeling laser wakefield accelerators in a Lorentz boosted frame

Modeling of laser-plasma wakefield accelerators in an optimal frame of reference [1] is shown to produce orders of magnitude speed-up of calculations from first principles. Obtaining these speedups requires mitigation of a high frequency instability that otherwise limits effectiveness in addition to solutions for handling data input and output in a relativistically boosted frame of reference. The observed high-frequency instability is mitigated using methods including an electromagnetic solver with tunable coefficients, its extension to accomodate Perfectly Matched Layers and Friedman's damping algorithms, as well as an efficient large bandwidth digital filter. It is shown that choosing theframe of the wake as the frame of reference allows for higher levels of filtering and damping than is possible in other frames for the same accuracy. Detailed testing also revealed serendipitously the existence of a singular time step at which the instability level is minimized, independently of numerical dispersion, thus indicating that the observed instability may not be due primarily to Numerical Cerenkov as has been conjectured. The techniques developed for Cerenkov mitigation prove nonetheless to be very efficient at controlling the instability. Using these techniques, agreement at the percentage level is demonstrated between simulations using different frames of reference, with speedups reaching two orders of magnitude for a 0.1 GeV class stages. The method then allows direct and efficient full-scale modeling of deeply depleted laser-plasma stages of 10 GeV-1 TeV for the first time, verifying the scaling of plasma accelerators to very high energies. Over 4, 5 and 6 orders of magnitude speedup is achieved for the modeling of 10 GeV, 100 GeV and 1 TeV class stages, respectively.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗