Benchmarking Collective Effects of Electron Interactions in a Wiggler with OPAL-FEL

TL;DR

This paper introduces OPAL-FEL, a new simulation tool combining particle tracking and electromagnetic modeling, and validates it through benchmark comparisons with experimental data on electron beamlines with wigglers.

Contribution

OPAL-FEL extends existing simulation capabilities by integrating OPAL with MITHRA, enabling accurate modeling of collective electron effects in wigglers and undulators.

Findings

Good agreement between simulations and experiments in space charge regime.

Accurate modeling of radiation effects in electron beamlines.

Validated the combined simulation approach for different regimes.

Abstract

OPAL-FEL is a recently developed tool for the modeling of particle accelerators containing wigglers or undulators. It extends the well established 3D electrostatic particle-tracking code OPAL, by merging it with the finite-difference time-domain electromagnetic solver MITHRA. We present results of two benchmark cases where OPAL-FEL simulations are compared to experimental results. Both experiments concern electron beamlines where the longitudinal phase space is modulated with a short magnetic wiggler. Good agreement was found in both the space charge and radiation dominated regimes.