User Friendly Steering and Diagnostics for Modeling Space Charge in Circular Accelerators

72625-Space charge (the interactions between particles in a beam) is suspected of adversely affecting many high-energy accelerators. However, the accurate numerical modeling of space charge is difficult. Many of the best accelerator codes do not have accurate space charge models, and those that accurately model space charge do not have the proper algorithms for circular accelerators. This project will implement the insertion of a state-of-the-art space charge model from the beam physics community into a simulation code for circular accelerators. The resulting code will be highly user-friendly and will include both a steering interface and a graphical user interface. Phase I demonstrated the ability to operate the software from a user-friendly steering interface, merge diagnostics with the steering, and use these new features to model a well-known circular accelerator. Phase II will complete the space charge routine, implement an automatic scripting interface wrapping utility, complete the steering modules and the graphical interface, and compile these components into a user-friendly toolkit for large-scale computation. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by awardee: The new code should improve a graphical interface toolkit used by a well-known commercial simulation code, making that code more commercially-viable. Beyond the accelerator community the code should provide a simplified environment for producing user-friendly tools for large parallel computation.