SPACE: 3D Parallel Solvers for Vlasov-Maxwell and Vlasov-Poisson Equations for Relativistic Plasmas with Atomic Transformations

TL;DR

SPACE is a sophisticated 3D parallel code for simulating relativistic plasmas, integrating advanced atomic physics and adaptive methods to improve accuracy and efficiency in electromagnetic and plasma simulations.

Contribution

The paper introduces SPACE, a novel 3D parallel particle-in-cell code with integrated atomic physics and adaptive algorithms for Vlasov-Maxwell and Vlasov-Poisson equations.

Findings

Efficient simulation of electromagnetic fields and relativistic plasmas.

Inclusion of atomic physics processes like ionization and recombination.

Demonstrated applications in accelerator science.

Abstract

A parallel, relativistic, three-dimensional particle-in-cell code SPACE has been developed for the simulation of electromagnetic fields, relativistic particle beams, and plasmas. In addition to the standard second-order Particle-in-Cell (PIC) algorithm, SPACE includes efficient novel algorithms to resolve atomic physics processes such as multi-level ionization of plasma atoms, recombination, and electron attachment to dopants in dense neutral gases. SPACE also contains a highly adaptive particle-based method, called Adaptive Particle-in-Cloud (AP-Cloud), for solving the Vlasov-Poisson problems. It eliminates the traditional Cartesian mesh of PIC and replaces it with an adaptive octree data structure. The code's algorithms, structure, capabilities, parallelization strategy and performances have been discussed. Typical examples of SPACE applications to accelerator science and engineering problems are also presented.