Automated detection and analysis of particle beams in laser-plasma accelerator simulations (open access)

Automated detection and analysis of particle beams in laser-plasma accelerator simulations

Numerical simulations of laser-plasma wakefield (particle) accelerators model the acceleration of electrons trapped in plasma oscillations (wakes) left behind when an intense laser pulse propagates through the plasma. The goal of these simulations is to better understand the process involved in plasma wake generation and how electrons are trapped and accelerated by the wake. Understanding of such accelerators, and their development, offer high accelerating gradients, potentially reducing size and cost of new accelerators. One operating regime of interest is where a trapped subset of electrons loads the wake and forms an isolated group of accelerated particles with low spread in momentum and position, desirable characteristics for many applications. The electrons trapped in the wake may be accelerated to high energies, the plasma gradient in the wake reaching up to a gigaelectronvolt per centimeter. High-energy electron accelerators power intense X-ray radiation to terahertz sources, and are used in many applications including medical radiotherapy and imaging. To extract information from the simulation about the quality of the beam, a typical approach is to examine plots of the entire dataset, visually determining the adequate parameters necessary to select a subset of particles, which is then further analyzed. This procedure requires laborious examination of …
Date: May 21, 2010
Creator: Ushizima, Daniela Mayumi; Geddes, Cameron G.; Cormier-Michel, Estelle; Bethel, E. Wes; Jacobsen, Janet; Prabhat et al.
System: The UNT Digital Library