Accelerator Modeling and Advanced Computing

SciDAC

LBNL AFRD personnel helped pioneer the DOE programs in high-end computational accelerator physics. They co-led the DOE "Grand Challenge in Computational Accelerator Physics" of the late 1990s and the DOE SciDAC "Accelerator Science and Technology Project" of the early 2000s. They currently play key roles in the current DOE SciDAC project, "Community Petascale Project for Accelerator Science and Simulation (ComPASS)." Thanks to SciDAC, a powerful suite of parallel simulation tools has been developed that represent a paradigm shift in computational accelerator science. Simulations that used to take weeks or more now take hours, and simulations that were once thought impossible are now performed routinely. These codes have been applied to many important projects of DOE/SC including existing facilities (the Tevatron complex, the Spallation Neutron Source, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider), facilities under construction (the Large Hadron Collider, the Linac Coherent Light Source), and to future facilities (design of a Linear Collider, design of a Rare Isotope Accelerator, design of a 4^th generation light source). The codes developed under SciDAC have also been used to explore innovative approaches to charged-particle acceleration based on lasers and plasmas.