Development of a parallel code for modeling plasma based accelerators

Advances in computational speed and memory make it now possible to do full scale 2D and 3D PIC simulations of laser and beam plasma interactions. However, the increased complexity of these codes and interactions make it necessary to apply modern programming approaches like object oriented frameworks to the development of these codes. We report here on our progress in developing the object oriented parallel PIC code OSIRIS that is implemented in Fortran 90. In its current state, the code can be used for 1D, 2D, and 3D simulations in Cartesian coordinates and for 2D simulations in cylindrically symmetric coordinates. We will present benchmarks of simulations done with this code for a proposed plasma wake field accelerator experiment