Contemporary particle-in-cell approach to laser-plasma modelling

By Bennett, Brady, Lawrence-Douglas, Ramsay, Sircombe, Gillies, Evans, Schmitz, Bell, Ridgers. 2015

1,455 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Particle-in-cell (PIC) methods have a long history in the study of laser-plasma interactions. Early electromagnetic codes used the Yee staggered grid for field variables combined with a leapfrog EM-field update and the Boris algorithm for particle pushing. The general properties of such schemes are well documented. Modern PIC codes tend to add to these high-order shape functions for particles, Poisson preserving field updates, collisions, ionisation, a hybrid scheme for solid density and high-field QED effects. In addition to these physics packages, the increase in computing power now allows simulations with real mass ratios, full 3D dynamics and multi-speckle interaction. This paper presents a review of the core algorithms used in current laser-plasma specific PIC codes. Also reported are estimates of self-heating rates, convergence of collisional routines and test of ionisation models which are not readily available elsewhere. Having reviewed the status of PIC algorithms we present a summary of recent applications of such codes in laser-plasma physics, concentrating on SRS, short-pulse laser-solid interactions, fast-electron transport, and QED effects.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Mechanics of Materials, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/192dde4c579a6e27df59d11b37d914dcfea241e1

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. C. Keitel
2. Thomas Blackburn
3. A. Thomas
4. A. Piazza
5. Mattias Marklund

In Mechanics of Materials

1. A. Piazza
2. A. Thomas
3. C. Keitel
4. Mattias Marklund

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

1. Thomas Blackburn
2. C. Keitel
3. A. Thomas
4. A. Piazza
5. M. Tamburini
6. Mattias Marklund

Citations in the corpus

• Experimental Evidence of Radiation Reaction in the Collision of a High-Intensity Laser Pulse with a Laser-Wakefield Accelerated Electron Beam (2017, methodology): “Simulated spectra were obtained and cross-checked using a suite of codes including EPOCH [49], SIMLA [50], and that used in Ref.”
• Experimental Signatures of the Quantum Nature of Radiation Reaction in the Field of an Ultraintense Laser (2017, methodology): “In order to rule out collective effects in the electron beam as a possible source for this mismatch, three-dimensional PIC simulations using the code EPOCH [44] have also been carried out.”