Parallel software for beam dynamics of isochronous cyclotron using PVM in distributed computing environment

A parallel software CYTRACK is developed for tracking of ions in an AVF-SF isochronous Cyclotron. It uses Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM) software for distributed computing under UNIX environment. Ions are tracked from injecti on to extraction in the rf-electric and dipole magnetic fields used in the AVF-SF cyclotron. The magnetic field has alternate hills (high field) and v alleys (low field) forming radial sectors. Present set-up has four Hills an d four Valleys. Two diametrically opposite valleys house two rf cavities pr oducing rf electric accelerating fields. Ion source injects ions in one of the remaining valleys, while they are extracted in the final orbit by an ex tractor placed in the remaining other valley. The tracking involves Runge-K utta integration of Lorentz's equation of motion of ions under isochronous acceleration by rf_ electric fields in the cavities. The program also has a n option to generate the magnetic field pattern for successive isochronous acceleration in every orbit, by iteration. All these calculations result in a large run time. In order to reduce the total run-time, the present paral lel software distributes the workload to a collection of heterogeneous comp uter systems to be viewed as a single parallel virtual machine. An analysis of run-times for present set of DEC- ALPHA OSF/1, HP-9000 PA-RISC and Linu x based Pentium systems is also present. The present software is of general nature, and by changing few associated functions describing field patterns and geometries, it can be used for other circular particle accelerators al so.