NAISS
SUPR
NAISS Projects
SUPR
Simulations of photon acceleration in a plasma-wakefield accelerator
Dnr:

NAISS 2025/23-558

Type:

NAISS Small Storage

Principal Investigator:

Michael Quin

Affiliation:

Göteborgs universitet

Start Date:

2025-10-03

End Date:

2026-07-01

Primary Classification:

10303: Fusion, Plasma and Space Physics

Allocation

Abstract

The lack of coherent and intense sources of light in the extreme ultraviolet (XUV) domain is a key limitation to attosecond science and materials characterization. Photon acceleration – where an optical laser pulse experiences an upshift in frequency to the XUV domain as it co-propagates with a relativistic plasma wave – promises to bridge this gap in laser technology. Specifically, we will simulate photon acceleration in a particle-beam-driven plasma-wakefield accelerator, of the kind currently operating at FLASH-Forward (DESY, Germany), AWAKE (CERN, Switzerland) and SLAC (Stanford, USA). The goal of this project is to optimize the plasma and driver-beam properties for the production of low-bandwidth XUV pulses, which are optimal for the applications listed above. Simulations will be carried out using a combination of state-of-the-art numerical codes, such as WarpX (UC Berkeley, https://github.com/BLAST-WarpX/warpx) and Ptarmigan (Gothenburg university, https://github.com/tgblackburn/ptarmigan). Note that the justification for computational resources is given in the applications NAISS 2025/5-174 and C3SE 408/25-1, and this storage application is intended to support simulations on VERA via C3SE 408/25-1.