Development of the 3D Parallel Particle-In-Cell Code IMPACT to Simulate the Ion Beam Transport System of VENUS (Abstract)

The superconducting ECR ion source VENUS serves as the prototype injector ion source for the Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA) driver linac. The RIA driver linac requires a great variety of high charge state ion beams with up to an order of magnitude higher intensity than currently achievable with conventional ECR ion sources. In order to design the beam line optics of the low energy beam line for the RIA front end for the wide parameter range required for the RIA driver accelerator, reliable simulations of the ion beam extraction from the ECR ion source through the ion mass analyzing system are essential. The RIA low energy beam transport line must be able to transport intense beams (up to 10 mA) of light and heavy ions at 30 keV.For this purpose, LBNL is developing the parallel 3D particle-in-cell code IMPACT to simulate the ion beam transport from the ECR extraction aperture through the analyzing section of the low energy transport system. IMPACT, a parallel, particle-in-cell code, is currently used to model the superconducting RF linac section of RIA and is being modified in order to simulate DC beams from the ECR ion source extraction. By using the high performance of parallel supercomputing we will be able to account consistently for the changing space charge in the extraction region and the analyzing section. A progress report and early results in the modeling of the VENUS source will be presented