Optics code development at Los Alamos

This paper is an overview of part of the beam optics code development effort in the Accelerator Technology Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The aim of this effort is to improve our capability to design advanced beam optics systems. The work reported is being carried out by a collaboration of permanent staff members, visiting consultants, and student research assistants. The main components of the effort are: building a new framework of common supporting utilities and software tools to facilitate further development; research and development on basic computational techniques in classical mechanics and electrodynamics; and evaluation and comparison of existing beam optics codes, and support for their continuing development. 17 refs.