3D particle-in-cell code development for charged particle beam dynamics

The nonlinear dynamic of high intensity beams in hadron linacs is of serious concern and poses multiple limitations on its operation. An efficient and self-consistent approach to study the behaviour of such beams in external focusing and accelerating fields is to use a particle-in-cell (PIC) algorithm. Though there are numerous codes available commercially, their source code is not accessible, and therefore improvements or modifications cannot be carried out. Here we present details of an indigenously developed, fully three dimensional, PIC code PARTRACK that we have developed for the beam dynamics of charged particle beams. The code follows a standard PIC algorithm with the features like beam matching, field map import. Here we also present the benchmarking studies with the commercial code Tracewin for the normal conducting injector section of the Medium Energy High Intensity Proton Accelerator (MEHIPA). (author)