ELITAS

The ELITAS (Extreme Light Infrastructure Tools for Advanced Simulation) project is focused on simulation and visualization tools for extreme values of electromagnetic field and plasma physics with nonlocal transport of thermal and radiation energy.

Project Period: 1/6/2017 – 31/12/2019

Registration Number: CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001793

Upcoming high-power laser facilities such as ELI Beamlines face new challenges as far as predictive simulations are concerned. These challenges exist for technology as much as for physics. The present proposed research program is addressing three fundamental issues related to high-power laser facilities.

The focused intensities of a 10 PetaWatt laser pulse will exceed 10²² W/cm² and may reach 10²⁴ W/cm² . At these extreme field values new physics effects such as radiation-reaction and pair creation processes (with subsequent cascading) have to be incorporated correctly in kinetic simulation tools and the numerics adjusted.
The contrast of any laser is limited. PW lasers therefore have a non-negligible pre-pulse which preconditions the materiál with which the main pulse is interacting, changing e.g. the location of the critical surface and creating an under-critical plasma in front of the target. The physics of this plasma is determined by non-local thermal and radiation transport. Correct simulation of these conditions is challenging. This kind of physics happens to be also very important for inertial confinement fusion (ICF).
Visualization of simulation data is necessary for a better understanding and also for outreach activities of modern science. The complexity and size of the simulation data requires new ways to visualize them and present them in a way they can be grasped easily also by non-specialists.

The above mentioned three topics each constitute one work package of the research program.

The project is also strongly linked with the effort already undertaken to establish a local high-performance computing center in ELI Beamlines in order to support the planning and operation of experiments and technological development. In addition the visualization program is linked to the already successfully implemented virtual beamline (VBL) activities in ELI Beamlines.

Project ELITAS (Advanced simulation tools for ELI Beamlines) is approved by the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports and is funded within the Operational Programme Research, Development and Education.

Project leader: Stefan Andreas Weber; stefan.weber@eli-beams.eu