A New Version of Sixtrack with Collimation and Aperture Interface

Simulations of collimation and beam cleaning were so far often performed with simplified computer models. However, the increase in available CPU power has opened the possibility for far more realistic simulations. For large accelerators like LHC it is now possible to track millions of particles, element by element over hundreds of turns. The well established SixTrack code treats the full six-dimensional phase space and considers the non-linear magnet components up to very high order. This code is being used for all LHC tracking simulations and has well developed linear and non-linear error models. SixTrack was extended for tracking of large ensembles of halo particles, taking into account halo interaction with arbitrarily placed collimators. An interface to a program for aperture analysis allows obtaining beam loss maps in the machine aperture. A standardized and portable SixTrack version is now available, providing all functionality of the old SixTrack, as well as the newly added support for halo tracking, collimation and aperture loss maps.