The use of electromagnetic particle-in-cell codes in accelerator applications

The techniques developed for the numerical simulation of plasmas have numerous applications relevant to accelerators. The operation of many accelerator components involves transients, interactions between beams and rf fields, and internal plasma oscillations. These effects produce non-linear behavior which can be represented accurately by particle in cell (PIC) simulations. We will give a very brief overview of the algorithms used in PIC Codes. We will examine the range of parameters over which they are useful. We will discuss the factors which determine whether a two or three dimensional simulation is most appropriate. PIC codes have been applied to a wide variety of diverse problems, spanning many of the systems in a linear accelerator. We will present a number of practical examples of the application of these codes to areas such as guns, bunchers, rf sources, beam transport, emittance growth and final focus. 8 refs., 8 figs., 2 tabs