US DOE Grand Challenge in Computational Accelerator Physics

Particle accelerators are playing an increasingly important role in basic and applied science, and are enabling new accelerator-driven technologies. But the design of next-generation accelerators, such as linear colliders and high intensity linacs, will require a major advance in numerical modeling capability due to extremely stringent beam control and beam loss requirements, and the presence of highly complex three-dimensional accelerator components. To address this situation, the U.S. Department of Energy has approved a ''Grand Challenge'' in Computational Accelerator Physics, whose primary goal is to develop a parallel modeling capability that will enable high performance, large scale simulations for the design, optimization, and numerical validation of next-generation accelerators. In this paper we report on the status of the Grand Challenge