A modern particle-in-cell code for beam-beam simulations of future colliders
Abstract
A key challenge in the design of next-generation colliders is predicting the effects of beam-beam interactions and using these predictions to optimize machine performance. Beam-beam interactions are characterized by strong focusing forces, radiative effects, and the generation of background particles. While analytical formulas provide insight into the dynamics of beam-beam interactions, these nonlinear, coupled effects are most accurately described with numerical methods. In this paper, we introduce the open-source particle-in-cell code WarpX as a modern tool for modeling the interaction point in future lepton colliders. WarpX provides high-performance execution on distributed GPU architectures within an open-source and actively maintained code base. We present convergence scans and benchmarks against the established beam-beam codes GUINEA-PIG (v1.2.2) and CAIN (v2.42) for luminosity spectra, photon emission, and secondary-particle production under a wide range of beam parameters corresponding to different collider concepts. Our results show that WarpX (v26.09) reproduces the benchmark beam-beam observables while enabling GPU-portable, extensible simulations. These results establish WarpX as a scalable platform for high-fidelity beam-beam modeling in future collider studies.
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BibTeX
@misc{formenti2026modern,
title = {{A modern particle-in-cell code for beam-beam simulations of future colliders}},
author = {Arianna Formenti and Remi Lehe and Axel Huebl and Stepan S. Bulanov and Jens Osterhoff and Andrew Myers and Weiqun Zhang and Spencer Gessner and Peter Kicsiny and Anna Kinderman and Bao Nguyen and Jinseo Park and Jean-Luc Vay},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.17557},
eprint = {2610.17557},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17557},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - A modern particle-in-cell code for beam-beam simulations of future colliders
AU - Arianna Formenti
AU - Remi Lehe
AU - Axel Huebl
AU - Stepan S. Bulanov
AU - Jens Osterhoff
AU - Andrew Myers
AU - Weiqun Zhang
AU - Spencer Gessner
AU - Peter Kicsiny
AU - Anna Kinderman
AU - Bao Nguyen
AU - Jinseo Park
AU - Jean-Luc Vay
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/13
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.17557
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17557
AB - A key challenge in the design of next-generation colliders is predicting the effects of beam-beam interactions and using these predictions to optimize machine performance. Beam-beam interactions are characterized by strong focusing forces, radiative effects, and the generation of background particles. While analytical formulas provide insight into the dynamics of beam-beam interactions, these nonlinear, coupled effects are most accurately described with numerical methods. In this paper, we introduce the open-source particle-in-cell code WarpX as a modern tool for modeling the interaction point in future lepton colliders. WarpX provides high-performance execution on distributed GPU architectures within an open-source and actively maintained code base. We present convergence scans and benchmarks against the established beam-beam codes GUINEA-PIG (v1.2.2) and CAIN (v2.42) for luminosity spectra, photon emission, and secondary-particle production under a wide range of beam parameters corresponding to different collider concepts. Our results show that WarpX (v26.09) reproduces the benchmark beam-beam observables while enabling GPU-portable, extensible simulations. These results establish WarpX as a scalable platform for high-fidelity beam-beam modeling in future collider studies.
ER -