Modeling beams with elements in phase space

Conventional particle codes represent beams as a collection of macroparticles. An alternative is to represent the beam as a collection of current carrying elements in phase space. While such a representation has limitations, it may be less noisy than a macroparticle model, and it may provide insights about the transport of space charge dominated beams which would otherwise be difficult to gain from macroparticle simulations. The phase space element model of a beam is described, and progress toward an implementation and difficulties with this implementation are discussed. A simulation of an axisymmetric beam using 1d elements in phase space is demonstrated