Boulder, Colorado - February 15, 2017:

Researcher Yelong Wei used VSim to determine the quality of an electron beam from a dielectric dual grating structure, which is a proposed miniature particle accelerator. Particle accelerators are, in general, big and costly. The size and expense of particle accelerators is largely due to the limit of current RF cavity technology in terms of how much each cavity can accelerate particles without electrical breakdown. Extremely high particle energies are needed to explore fundamental subatomic processes. Dielectric laser-driven accelerators (DLAs) based on grating structures promise affordable, miniature particle accelerators that could be used by researchers in many different fields of scientific endeavor.

VSim simulates the complex interactions between beams, dielectric surroundings, and lasers, enabling researchers to extend the frontiers of current accelerators. Access the research paper Beam quality study for a grating-based dielectric laser-driven accelerator^[1].

[1] Wei, Y., S. Jamison, G. Xia, K. Hanahoe, Y. Li, J. D. A. Smith, and C. P. Welsch. "Beam quality study for a grating-based dielectric laser-driven accelerator." Physics of Plasmas 24, no. 2 (2017): 023102. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4975080