Recent advances in high-performance modeling of plasma-based acceleration using the full PIC method

Numerical simulations have been critical in the recent rapid developments of plasma-based acceleration concepts. Among the various available numerical techniques, the particle-in-cell (PIC) approach is the method of choice for self-consistent simulations from first principles. The fundamentals of the PIC method were established decades ago, but improvements or variations are continuously being proposed. We report on several recent advances in PIC-related algorithms that are of interest for application to plasma-based accelerators, including (a) detailed analysis of the numerical Cherenkov instability and its remediation for the modeling of plasma accelerators in laboratory and Lorentz boosted frames, (b) analytic pseudo-spectral electromagnetic solvers in Cartesian and cylindrical (with azimuthal modes decomposition) geometries, and (c) novel analysis of Maxwell's solvers' stencil variation and truncation, in application to domain decomposition strategies and implementation of perfectly matched layers in high-order and pseudo-spectral solvers.