VORPAL is used by Tech-X customers to develop physics simulation models for many industry and research applications, including laser wakefield accelerators, plasma thrusters, high-power microwave guides, and plasma processing chambers. VORPAL's ionization and neutral gas models bridge the gap between plasma and neutral flow physics.
Here are some VORPAL success stories from Tech-X customers:
Presently, pulsed power device performance is limited when there is breakdown at the vacuum-insulator interface, often referred to as flashover due to the sudden onset of electrons across the surface. Using VORPAL, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have improved their understanding of surface flashover by doing a step-by-step validation of the underlying physics and then applying the validated models to different configurations. Read more...
Expensive and relatively large photonic crystal (PhC) cavities can be used to accelerate charged particle beams due to their ability to confine the accelerating mode without any higher order modes, which would degrade the beam quality. Researchers at the University of Colorado have used VORPAL to find new optimal irregular structures for PhC cavities leading to greatly reduced material requirements and device size. Read more...
Novel high-energy electron cooling systems have been proposed to dramatically increase the luminosity of 100 GeV per nucleon Au+79 beams in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). VORPAL computations provided key support for design modifications of an earlier electron cooling proposal for RHIC, with potential cost reductions estimated in the tens of millions of dollars. Read more...
The Smith-Purcell Free-Electron Laser operating as a backward wave oscillator is proposed as a high-gain, tunable amplifier for THz radiation, as needed for medical imaging and security purposes. However, finding the optimal operating parameters has generally been limited to laboratory experiments. Using VORPAL, researchers at Northern Illinois University and Fermi National Accelerator Lab improved Smith-Purcell configurations for THz generation without need for expensive experimental tests. Read more...
Scaled to terahertz frequencies, the common helix traveling-wave tube (TWT) is difficult to manufacture, cannot dissipate heat sufficiently, and is fragile. VORPAL was used by researchers at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) in the design of an alternate, microfabricated, ladder-type TWT, which does not have these problems. Read more...
A method is required to produce high energy beams with small energy spread in order to develop cheaper, smaller, and efficient table-top particle accelerators.VORPAL was used by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to simulate experiments in which a density channel was used to guide a relativistically intense laser over ten times the usual diffraction distance, producing electrons with percent level energy spread for the first time in a plasma based accelerator. Read more...