A new Lattice Boltzmann application to plasma wakefield acceleration

Plasma wakefiled consitutes a new technique in the field of particle acceleration, that promises same (or superior) energy gains w.r.t. conventional modern-day methods, while being operated in more compact and less expensive physical structures. In this talk we present the first application of the Lattice Boltzmann (LB) method to the problem of plasma wakefield acceleration, where the relevant macroscopic equations can be re-casted as advection equations.

In fact, despite LB originally being developed as a numerical solver that strongly relies on its kinetic nature to provide a meaningfull description of fluid flows, it has also found appliance as a solver of advection-diffusion equations, and as such its range of application has considerably widened.

We therefore present how plasma wakefield equations can be recasted into a LB-treatable problem, show all the strenghts and features of this new approach, and present some preliminary results.