SBIR-STTR Award

Laser-electron beam interactions have numerous applications in light sources and advanced accelerator facilities yet the tools to model such interactions are decoupled requiring stringing the input/output of many codes to retrieve significant results. In addition, these codes are very specialized with steep learning curves and rarely provide an intuitive user interface for ease in navigability. A modular simulation tool based on fundamental principles will address the start-to-end simulation downfalls by incorporating parsers for the most widely trusted codes. The tool will also include a module specific to laser-electron beam interactions, such as free-electron laser modulators or inverse Compton sources, with an experimentalists viewpoint to model diagnostic observables.Commercial Applications and Other

Benefits:
The code will offer the advanced accelerator and light source communities a flexible, inexpensive tool to aid in solving real-life problems dealing with laser-electron beam interactions. Furthermore, the code will be flexible and accessible, allowing for intuitive education of students and researchers who are interested in accelerator design, advanced acceleration schemes, radiation production, and beam dynamics. The code will offer a cost-effective way to aid in the one-to-one comparison of measured data to theoretical results, saving millions of dollars in commissioning and operations expenditures by providing the ability to run virtual experiments with proposed diagnostics and measurements

Present day simulation tools for the accelerator community have a narrow focus on specific problems and have unwieldy command-line driven inputs. In addition, to produce relevant results, the results of one program have to be fed into another, increasing the possibility of errors in the translation between different file formats. The proposed code is built in a modular fashion, to allow varying sub-routines and element classes that can be integrated into an intuitive and user-friendly interface. This will increase user productivity in delivering solutions in accelerator system design. In Phase I, we developed a wave front transport module, a beam generation and transport module, and incorporated support for select external codes for use in start-to-end simulations. We also developed an algorithm for generic laser-electron beam interactions. In Phase II, we will expand our physics modules to include enhanced laser-electron beam interaction modules, such as inverse Compton scattering and inverse free-electron laser. We will focus on providing an intuitive interface that can handle start-to-end simulations for more codes. Commercial Applications and Other

Benefits:
The results of the efforts will find immediate utility in present accelerator and light source facilities which have direct impact on industrial, medical, defense and basic research applications.