| CALDER-CIRC [1] is quasi-cylindrical 3D PIC code with Fourier decomposition of the electromagnetic fields in the poloidal direction. Only the lower modes of the Fourier expansion are calculated, which strongly reduces the computation time. This code is well suited for simulation of laser interaction with low density plasma, as the physic stays quasiaxisymmetric and the higher modes can be neglected. Benchmarks between Calder-Circ and the full 3D Cartesian PIC code Calder show that laser wakefield accelerator (LWFA) can be well simulated by Calder-Circ. A quantitative agreement is found with the 3D Cartesian simulations but the computation time is reduced by two orders of magnitude. Calder-Circ is currently used to understand the physics of LWFA and to simulate experimental results. As an example, we report on the study of optical injection schemes and of dark current selfinjection in a LWFA. [1] A. F. Lifschitz et al., J. Comput. Phys. 228 1803 (2009) |
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