Virtual Positron Experiment

Having established the feasibility of the virtual positron experiment (VPE) in Phase I, the objective of the Phase II proposal is to utilize three-dimensional particle-in-cell capability to investigate standard and novel injection, trapping, and extractionconcepts for positron confinement experiments. Standard injection, trapping, and extraction designs will be fielded on the Positronics Research LLC (PRLLC) Positron Penning Trap-1 (PPT-1) experiment. The VPE is tailored specifically to understand the PPT-1experiment. Four basic issues are positron plasma column stability, confinement time scaling, insulator breakdown, and efficient trapping of positron beams. In Phase I, PRLLC has assembled a 16-processor Linux cluster. In Phase II the cluster will beupgraded to 64-processors. In addition to the ASPEN code, the three-dimensional ICEPIC code will be installed on the cluster. The opportunity to incorporate large-scale simulation technology into the antimatter confinement program will increase the abilityto understand the physics of the PPT-1 experiment, which will ultimately lead to successful design of second-generation experiments. The deliverable will be a final report that includes a description of the cluster design, verification and validationresults, full-scale simulation results of the PPT-1 experiment, as well as the evaluation of a number of novel injection, trapping, and extraction concepts.