Table-top supercomputers for not-quite-table-top radiation source

Laser-driven sources of proton, electron and x-ray beams can provide for new insights into the dynamics of matter on the picosecond to femtosecond time scale. However, for real-world applications such as tumor therapy with laser-driven ion beams or material probing with X-ray Thomson scattering sources our understanding and control of beam properties has to improved. In my talk I will show how modern supercomputing hardware such as GPUs can help us find optimum scenarios for laser-driven radiation sources. Besides showing pretty movies I will focus on the challenges of modern laser plasma simulations and possible ways to overcome them. The talk will conclude with two examples that explore laser matter interaction which illustrate why a pen, some paper and a lot of thinking are always better than all hardware you can possibly buy.