Enhancing parallel quasi-static particle-in-cell simulations with a pipelining algorithm

A pipelining algorithm to overcome the limitation on scaling quasi-static particle-in-cell models of relativistic beams in plasmas to a very large number of processors is described. The pipelining algorithm uses multiple groups of processors and optimizes the job allocation on the processors in parallel computing. The algorithm is implemented on the quasi-static code QuickPIC and is shown to scale to over 103 processors and increased the scale and speed by two orders of magnitude over the non-pipelined model. The new approach opens the door to performing full scale 3D simulations of future plasma wakefield accelerators or full lifetime models of beam interaction with electron clouds in circular accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.