PICKSC

On September 18 to 20, the first annual OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop was held at UCLA. The aims of the workshop were to introduce users to the new features and design of our plasma simulation code OSIRIS 4.0, to allow OSIRIS users to share experiences and discuss best practices, to identify useful test and demonstration problems, to discuss how to transition from being a user to an active developer, and to identify areas for near term software improvements and a community strategy for carrying out necessary developments.

There were over 60 attendees from the U.S., Europe, and Asia, with widely ranging experiences and expertise. It was a great success, with many discussions and new collaborations and friendships.

The agenda, as well as copies of many of the talks, can be found on our Presentations page. A summary of the workshop will be posted soon.

The OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop will be held annually and alternate between IST in Portugal and UCLA in the U.S. With an active and growing user base that includes over 25 research groups and over 100 users worldwide, the continued success of OSIRIS will benefit greatly from maintaining active community engagement and involvement. Not only is OSIRIS a premiere particle-in-cell simulation tool, it is also a continuously evolving and very complex piece of software. We recognize that it is essential to communicate effectively with our user base and to develop tools which allow us to effectively manage feature development, code dissemination, and code documentation.

If you are interested in becoming a part of the OSIRIS community as a user and/or developer please contact us at picksc.org@gmail.com.

The UCLA Particle-in-Cell and Kinetic Simulation Center (http://picksc.idre.ucla.edu) and the IST Extreme Plasma Physics Team in Portugal (http://epp.tecnico.ulisboa.pt) are pleased to announce the first annual OSIRIS Users and Developers Workshop. The location will alternate between UCLA and IST with the first workshop to be held at UCLA September 18-20. This meeting is open to all who have gained access to or are interested in gaining access to the OSIRIS source code and data analysis tools through an MoU between either UCLA or IST.

The goals of the workshop are:

1. To introduce users to the new features and design of OSIRIS 4.0.
2. To allow users of OSIRIS to share experiences and discuss best practices.
3. To identify useful test and demonstration problems.
4. To discuss how to transition from being a user to an active developer.
5. Identify areas for near term software improvements and a community strategy for carrying out the necessary development.

If you are interested in attending this workshop or in getting access to OSIRIS please contact picksc.org@gmail.com.

OSIRIS is a state-of-the-art massively parallel relativistic particle-in-cell code that is now being used by roughly 100 users worldwide through more than 25 MoUs with UCLA or IST. OSIRIS results have been featured or included in 100’s of publications in journals such as Nature, Nature Physics, Physical Review Letters, and Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Over the past 20 years, the development of OSIRIS at UCLA has been partially supported by NSF, DOE, and LLNL, and at IST has been supported by the European Research Council, the Portuguese National Science Foundation (FCT), and the European Space Agency.

PICKSC members recently attended the 17th Advanced Accelerator Concepts (AAC) Workshop held at the National Harbor in Washington DC between July 31 and August 5. Copies of the presentations have not been posted. The PI of PICKSC received the AAC prize “for his leadership and pioneering contributions to the theory and particle-in-cell simulations of plasma based acceleration”. In addition, a PICKSC visiting student from IST in Portugal, Diana Amorim, received a best poster prize for her presentation, “Transverse evolution of positron beams accelerating in hollow plasma channel non-linear wakefields.”