Parallel computation of Inverse Compton Scattering radiation spectra based on Liénard-Wiechert potentials

Inverse Compton Scattering (ICS) has gained much attention recently because of its promise for the development of table-top-size X-ray light sources. Precise and fast simulation is an indispensable tool for predicting the radiation property of a given machine design and to optimize its parameters. Instead of the conventional approach to compute radiation spectra which directly evaluates the discretized Fourier integral of the Liénard-Wiechert field given analytically (referred to as the frequency-domain method), this article focuses on an approach where the field is recorded along the observer time on a uniform time grid which is then used to compute the radiation spectra after completion of the simulation, referred to as the time-domain method. Besides the derivation and implementation details of the proposed method, we analyze possible parallelization schemes and compare the parallel performance of the proposed time-domain method with the frequency-domain method. We will characterize scenarios/conditions under which one method is expected to outperform the other. •Numerical simulation for the development of table-top size X-ray light sources.•An efficient time-domain discretization for solving Liénard-Wiechert potentials.•A parallelization scheme of the proposed time-domain discretization method.•Performance models and comparison of time- and frequency-domain method.