VORPAL - a multidimensional code for simulating advanced acceleration concepts

VORPAL is a new simulation code under development for simulation of advanced acceleration concepts such as laser wake field acceleration. VORPAL makes use of object oriented programming techniques to achieve greater flexibility and extensibility. For example, with VORPAL, one can set the physical dimension of the simulation at run time rather than compile time. This allows the user to simulate an advanced acceleration scenario rapidly in 2D to look for qualitative results, then move to 3D with the same code and nearly the same input file for more detailed simulations. The VORPAL framework can support multiple particle models (fluid, PIC), but at present only fluid representations are in place. VORPAL is designed to run on most flavors of UNIX and will run on both serial and parallel machines, including Beowulf clusters. VORPAL stores data in HDF5 files, allowing for subsequent visualization by a number of packages, including RSI´s IDL and OpenDX. VORPAL will be applied to problems of laser plasma interactions in the near future