The presented thesis establishes simulations on modern massively parallel computing hardware to investigate relativistic laser-driven plasmas. The latter are of special interest as they may provide a compact source for energetic ion beams. Computer simulations provide valuable insight into ultrafast plasma processes, evolving in the ultrahigh intensity (l_0 >> 1018 W\/cm^2) focus of the ultrashort (tau_0 = 30 – 500 fs) laser pulses driving the interaction. Such simulations require high numerical resolution and full geometric treatment for reliable predictions, which can only be addressed with high-performance computing. The open source particle-in-cell code PIConGPU, which is developed in the framework of this thesis, answers these demands, providing speed and scalability to run on the world’s largest supercomputers. PIConGPU is designed with a modular and extensible implementation, allowing to compute on current and upcoming hardware from a single code base. Furthermore, challenges arising for generated data rates, reaching 1 PByte per simulation, are resolved with scalable data reduction techniques and novel workflows, such as interactive simulations. Numerical studies are performed on two novel targets for laser-proton acceleration with near-critical and mass-limited properties. A micrometer-scale spherical target is explored with realistic temporal laser contrast, providing an interpretation for experimental results collected at the PW-class laser system PHELIX (tau_0 = 500 fs pulse length). In this study, 3D modeling with the GPU supercomputer Titan enabled the identification of pre-expansion to near-critical target conditions, which uncovers a regime of volumetric laser-electron interaction generating a highly directed proton beam. Furthermore, a novel cryogenic hydrogen jet target is researched in close collaboration to experiments at the laser system DRACO (\u03c40 = 30 fs). This target system provides a unique setup for the isolated investigation of multi-species effects and their influence on the generated ion energy distribution. A novel analytical model provides a link between characteristic modulations in the ion energy spectra and ensemble properties of the microscopic electron distribution. In view of a potential experimental realization, parametric scans are performed confirming the feasibility of the proposed setup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The presented thesis establishes simulations on modern massively parallel computing hardware to investigate relativistic laser-driven plasmas. The latter are of special interest as they may provide a compact source for energetic ion beams. Computer simulations provide valuable insight into ultrafast plasma processes, evolving in the ultrahigh intensity (l_0 >> 1018 W\/cm^2) focus of the ultrashort […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":351,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[89,3,12],"tags":[14,1682,20,176,299,1783,1931,390],"class_list":["post-18978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nvidia-cuda","category-paper","category-physics","tag-cuda","tag-hpc","tag-nvidia","tag-package","tag-particle-in-cell-methods","tag-physics","tag-tesla-p100","tag-thesis"],"views":2320,"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hgpu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hgpu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hgpu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hgpu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/351"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hgpu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hgpu.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hgpu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hgpu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hgpu.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}