A modern particle-in-cell code for beam-beam simulations of future colliders

Abstract

A key challenge in the design of next-generation colliders is predicting the effects of beam-beam interactions and using these predictions to optimize machine performance. Beam-beam interactions are characterized by strong focusing forces, radiative effects, and the generation of background particles. While analytical formulas provide insight into the dynamics of beam-beam interactions, these nonlinear, coupled effects are most accurately described with numerical methods. In this paper, we introduce the open-source particle-in-cell code WarpX as a modern tool for modeling the interaction point in future lepton colliders. WarpX provides high-performance execution on distributed GPU architectures within an open-source and actively maintained code base. We present convergence scans and benchmarks against the established beam-beam codes GUINEA-PIG (v1.2.2) and CAIN (v2.42) for luminosity spectra, photon emission, and secondary-particle production under a wide range of beam parameters corresponding to different collider concepts. Our results show that WarpX (v26.09) reproduces the benchmark beam-beam observables while enabling GPU-portable, extensible simulations. These results establish WarpX as a scalable platform for high-fidelity beam-beam modeling in future collider studies.