Understand

• Units
  • Basic reference quantities
  • Arbitrary reference quantities
  • Tips for the namelist
  • Problems requiring explicit units
  • Quantities integrated over the grid
  • Macro-particle weights
• PIC algorithms
  • The Maxwell-Vlasov model
  • Quasi-particles
  • Time and space discretization
  • Initialization of the simulation
  • The PIC loop
    • Field interpolation
    • Particle push
    • Current deposition
    • Maxwell solvers
  • Boundary conditions
  • Multi-pass filtering of the current densities
  • Friedman filter on the electric field
• Parallelization basics
  • Nodes, cores, processes and threads
  • Managing processes and threads
  • Decomposition of the whole domain
  • Load balancing between MPI patch collections
  • Practical setup
  • MPI patch collections forming rectangular areas
• Single-domain multiple decompositions
• Vectorization
  • Notion of Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) Vectorization
  • SIMD vectorization of the particle operators
  • Vectorization Performance
  • Adaptive vectorization
  • Large-scale simulations
    • Mildly-relativistic collisionless shock
• Binary collisions & reactions
  • The binary collision scheme
  • Test cases for collisions
  • Collisional ionization
  • Test cases for ionization
  • Nuclear reactions
  • Collisions debugging
  • References
• Ionization
  • Collisional ionization
  • Field ionization
    • Physical model for field ionization
    • Monte-Carlo scheme
    • Benchmarks
  • Field ionization with a laser envelope
  • User-defined ionization rate
  • References
• High-energy photon emission & radiation reaction
  • Inverse Compton scattering
    • Assumptions
    • Rate of photon emission and associated quantities
    • Regimes of radiation reaction
      • For arbitrary values of the electron quantum parameter \(\chi\) (but mandatory in the quantum regime \(\chi \gtrsim 1\))
      • Intermediate, moderately quantum regime \(\chi \lesssim 1\)
      • The classical regime \(\chi \ll 1\)
      • Choosing the good model for your simulation
  • Implementation
    • Continuous, Landau-Lifshitz-like models
    • Fokker-Planck stochastic model of Niel et al.
    • Monte-Carlo full-quantum model
  • Benchmarks
    • Radiation emission by ultra-relativistic electrons in a constant magnetic field
    • Counter-propagating plane wave, 1D
    • Synchrotron, 2D
    • Thin foil, 2D
  • Performances
  • References
• Multiphoton Breit-Wheeler pair creation
  • Physical model
  • Stochastic scheme
  • Implementation
  • Tables
  • Benchmarks
    • Synchrotron, 2D
    • Counter-propagating plane wave, 1D
• Particle Merging
  • Understand the method
    • 1. Momentum sub-groups
    • 2. Merging algorithm for massive macro-particles
    • 3. Merging algorithm for macro-photons
  • Implementation details
    • 1. Cartesian sub-group discretization
    • 2. Spherical sub-group discretization
    • 3. Solid-angle correction in 3D
    • 4. Accumulation effect
    • 5. Logarithmic scale
  • Simulation results
    • 1. 3D QED cascade
  • References
• Particle Injector
  • The method implemented in Smilei
  • Recommendation
  • Implementation
• Laser envelope model
  • The envelope approximation
  • The envelope equation
  • The ponderomotive equations of motion
  • The averaged electromagnetic fields
  • The ponderomotive PIC loop
    • Field interpolation
    • Susceptibility deposition
    • Ponderomotive momentum push
    • Envelope equation solution
    • Ponderomotive position push
    • Current deposition
    • Maxwell solvers
  • Laser polarization in the envelope model
  • Computing the laser electric field from the laser envelope
  • The numerical solution of the envelope equation
  • References
• Field initialization for relativistic species
  • The relativistic Poisson’s equation
  • Recommendations for relativistic species field initialization
  • References
• Azimuthal modes decomposition
  • Mathematical definition
  • Decomposition of vector fields
  • Maxwell’s equations in cylindrical geometry
  • Interaction with the macro-particles
  • Tips
  • Conventions for the namelist
  • Classical and relativistic Poisson’s equation
  • The envelope model in cylindrical coordinates
  • On-Axis boundary conditions in FDTD
    • Primal and Dual grids
    • Cancellation on axis
    • Transverse field on axis
    • Longitudinal fields on axis
    • Below axis
    • Currents near axis