2020/07/31 by Fei Li, Viktor K. Decyk, Kyle G. Miller +9 · 24 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Classical mechanics #Field (mathematics) #Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Lorentz force #Magnetic field #Momentum (technical analysis) #Particle Accelerators and Free-Electron Lasers #Phase space #Physics #Position and momentum space #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Space (punctuation) #Spin (aerodynamics) #physics.comp-ph #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.jcp.2021.110367
published in Journal of Computational Physics 438, 110367 (Elsevier BV)
arxiv created 2021/04/21 · openalex publication_date 2021/04/21 · arxiv updated 2021/06/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Next-generation high-power lasers that can be focused to intensities exceeding 1023 W/cm2 are enabling new physics and applications. The physics of how these lasers interact with matter is highly nonlinear, relativistic, and can involve lowest-order quantum effects. The current tool of choice for modeling these interactions is the particle-in-cell (PIC) method. In strong fields, the motion of charged particles and their spin is affected by radiation reaction. Standard PIC codes usually use Boris or its variants to advance the particles, which requires very small time steps in the strong-field regime to obtain accurate results. In addition, some problems require tracking the spin of particles, which creates a 9D particle phase space (x, u, s). Therefore, numerical algorithms that enable high-fidelity modeling of the 9D phase space in the strong-field regime are desired. We present a new 9D phase space particle pusher based on analytical solutions to the position, momentum and spin advance from the Lorentz force, together with the semi-classical form of RR in the Landau-Lifshitz equation and spin evolution given by the Bargmann-Michel-Telegdi equation. These analytical solutions are obtained by assuming a locally uniform and constant electromagnetic field during a time step. The solutions provide the 9D phase space advance in terms of a particle's proper time, and a mapping is used to determine the proper time step for each particle from the simulation time step. Due to the analytical integration, the constraint on the time step needed to resolve trajectories in ultra-high fields can be greatly reduced. We present single-particle simulations and full PIC simulations to show that the proposed particle pusher can greatly improve the accuracy of particle trajectories in 9D phase space for given laser fields. A discussion on the numerical efficiency of the proposed pusher is also provided.