Abstract
Space-charge effects play an important role in high intensity and high brightness particle accelerators. These effects were generally studied self-consistently by solving the Vlasov-Poisson equations using a particle-in-cell method in the accelerator community. In this paper, we propose an alternative method to simulate the space-charge effects in the accelerator. Instead of solving the Vlasov-Poisson equations, the proposed approach solves the Schrödinger-Poisson equations to study the space-charge effects in accelerators. Using a quantum Schrödinger approach reduces the original problem from six- or four-dimensional phase space down to three or two spatial dimensions. It also provides a possibility to simulate accelerator beam physics on quantum computers by evolving the wave function through quantum gates. Benchmarks of a coasting proton beam through a focusing drift defocusing drift lattice show excellent agreement between the quantum Schrödinger method and the particle-in-cell method.
- Received 9 January 2022
- Accepted 7 March 2022
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevAccelBeams.25.034602
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Published by the American Physical Society