Benchmarking the laser package in xRage against FLASH and experimental data

This presentation will show comparisons of the Eulerian xRage code simulations for laser matter interactions to benchmark the accuracy of the code. The simulations results will be compared to experimental data collected using Thomson scattering. The results will include parametric studies to show degeneracy in the comparisons for interdependent variables in the code. In addition to comparisons with data, the results will be compared to the FLASH code another Eulerian code. Understanding the accuracy of the laser matter interactions is critical for a large number of High Energy Density Physics (HEDP) experiments which rely on these codes as design tools.