A simple graphics processing unit-accelerated propagation routine for laser pulses in the strong-field regime

A. Martínez de Velasco*, K. S.E. Eikema*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

We present a simple and easy-to-implement Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-accelerated routine to numerically simulate the propagation of ultrashort and intense laser pulses as they interact with a medium. The routine is based on the solution of Maxwell’s wave equation in the frequency domain with an extended Crank-Nicolson algorithm implemented in the Nvidia CUDA C++ programming language. The main advantages of our method are its significant speed-up factor and its ease of implementation, requiring only basic knowledge of CUDA and C++. In this article, we review the strong-field wave equations to be solved and their discretization and demonstrate how to implement a numerical solver for them on an Nvidia GPU. We show the results of the simulation of a near-infrared laser pulse propagating through a partially ionized atomic gas and discuss the performance of our GPU-accelerated scheme. Compared to a naïve central processing unit implementation of the same routine, our GPU-accelerated version is up to 198 times faster in standard regimes.

Original languageEnglish
Article number121401
Pages (from-to)1-8
Number of pages9
JournalReview of Scientific Instruments
Volume95
Issue number12
Early online date4 Dec 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Author(s).

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