Collaborative effort helps optimize cavities in accelerators

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Additionally, the more packets of electrons pumped through the cavity, the stronger the resulting wake fields.

Since the cavities resonate at certain frequencies, like a violin string, “nailing the acceleration frequency with high accuracy” can overcome this propensity, Tautges adds.  “Just as important is to damp out other frequencies, because it’s the other frequencies that excite the wake fields and cause these packets to go off path.”

The cavity walls’ shape can be tuned to achieve the right frequencies – and computer modeling can help, Tautges says.

“A common need in all of this is to be able to simulate those cavities with high accuracy, and also to simulate them with high-fidelity geometric representation because the shape is so important to the results,” he adds.  “That’s the goal.”

Collaborating with Diachin’s ITAPS group, the SLAC team ran computer simulations that enabled it “to double the luminosity of their current accelerator design, which directly increases the likelihood of scientists observing the interactions that the accelerator is built to observe,” Tautges says.

Diachin adds: “The main point is that you have mathematicians, computer scientists, and application physicists all working together toward a common goal.  It is the nature of these interdisciplinary teams that SciDAC has fostered.  The accelerator program is one of the real success stories of that model.  Without these collaborations there’s a lot SLAC would not have been able to do in terms of simulations with the fidelity they would like.”

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