Simulation of multiple plasma stages toward collider design

Plasma-based particle accelerators have been identified as promising candidates for future linear colliders. To achieve the energies needed for future colliders, many stages of plasma acceleration will be needed [1]. Beam transport between two stages has been realized experimentally [2] and the transport between several stages has been studied computationally [3]. There are numerous technical challenges that staged plasma-based accelerators would need to overcome to produce collider-quality beams [1]. In this work we present large scale simulations of many plasma stages to large energies. An effort was made to preserve beam quality, particularly the transverse emittance, by tuning the beam transport between the stages. This tuning was performed with the assistance of reduced order models, including low-azimuthal-order WarpX [4] simulations. We also discuss some work toward optimization of beam quality using surrogate models computed with machine learning techniques.

1. Lindstrom, Staging of plasma-wakefield accelerators, PRAB 2021

2. Steinke et al., Multistage coupling coupling of independent laser-plasma accelerators, Nature 2016

3. Vay et al., Modeling of a chain of three plasma accelerator stages with the WarpX electromagnetic PIC code on GPUs, POP 2021

4. Vay et al., Warp-X: A new exascale computing platform for beam–plasma simulations. NIMA 2018