LIAR: a new program for the modelling and simulation of linear accelerators with high gradients and small emittances

Linear accelerators are the central components of the proposed next generation of linear colliders. They need to provide acceleration of up to 750 GeV per beam while maintaining very small normalized emittances. Standard simulation programs, mainly developed for storage rings, do not meet the specific requirements for high energy linear accelerators. The authors present a new program LIAR (LInear Accelerator Research code) that includes wakefield effects, a 4D coupled beam description, specific optimization algorithms and other advanced features. Its modular structure allows to use and to extend it easily for different purposes. They present examples of simulations for SLC and NLC.