Introduction: Over the past years the General Particle Tracer
(GPT) package has
become a well established simulation tool for the design of accelerators and beam lines.
GPT is based on full 3D particle tracking techniques, providing a solid basis for the
study of all 3D and non-linear effects of charged particles dynamics in electromagnetic
fields. All built-in beam line components and external 2D/3D field-maps can
be arbitrarily positioned and oriented to simulate a complicated setup-up
and study the effects of misalignments. An embedded fifth order Runge-Kutta driver with adaptive stepsize control ensures
accuracy while computation time is kept to a minimum. GPT provides various
2D and 3D space-charge
models, including a sophisticated 3D particle-mesh method that scales O(N)
in terms of CPU time. Because of its modern implementation, GPT
can be easily extended by the user to perform highly specialized calculations for specific
applications. Hierarchical data analysis, automatic parameter scans and graphical output
allow for fast and detailed interpretation of the simulation results.
New features
of GPT version 2.8
compared to version 2.7 include:
Automatic
timestep reduction to prevents skipping small local elements
Ability to
read the initial xy-particle distribution from a grayscale bitmap image
Sector and
rectangular magnets with computationally fast fringe fields
New
utility to combine and sort several GDF files
New
installer with 'repair' functionality
Publications about GPT and GPT related projects can be found on our Publications page. Newly developed beamline components, updates
of the User Interface and an up-to-date bug list can be found on our News page. A description of our own
research is listed on our
Projects page. Our
Support
page can be used to obtain pricing and additional technical information. A
detailed list of all GPT features of the
latest release can be found here.
Is GPT an appropriate tool for you?
Although the capabilities and graphical user-interface of GPT dramatically
simplify the task of accelerator and beamline design, the package is not for
the novice. The learning curve is fairly steep, simply because using a
particle tracking code requires professional skills regardless of the tools.
Documentation and development: GPT is not a
black-box simulation package: All internal calculations and all 3D electromagnetic field
configurations are fully documented. Furthermore, the source code of all built-in elements
is available, allowing users to easily develop models for custom beam line components. GPT
has been under constant development since its first release in 1996 as a result of the joined effort
of Pulsar Physics and all GPT users. We feel very privileged to be able to continue this
path.
Dr. S.B. van der Geer, Dr. M.J. de Loos
The authors of the GPT code.
