Comparing 1D versus RZ dynamics of spectral pulse shaping of laser wakefield acceleration with WarpX PIC simulations

Laser-wakefield acceleration is a novel technique whereby we can accelerate electron bunches to GeV energies over less than a meter using high-intensity, ultrafast laser pulses. 3D simulations are necessary to tease out all the physics entailed but are expensive, while 1D simulations allow us to rapidly sample large swaths of parameter space and build large ensembles for training machine-learning models. In this study one-dimensional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of laser wakefield acceleration shots were performed with the PIC code WarpX. The 1D simulation parameters were first optimized for computational efficiency with convergence. Iteration over laser pulse parameters was performed to identify the regimes in which 1D simulations responded similarly to RZ counterparts.