Comparative assessment of simulation tools for beam delivery systems of linear colliders

In this paper, simulation codes for Beam Delivery Systems in linear colliders are discussed. Several tracking codes are available for particle tracking. They do not normally include precise calculation of the beam-beam effect, with accounting for pinch, hour-glass, air production. They provide instead the particle distributions at the interaction point, after tracking through the different components of the linear collider. Other simulation programs must be used to compute precisely the beam-beam interaction. The traditional approach is to use the output bunches from the tracking codes as input for the beam-beam programs. Several tools suitable for advanced luminosity studies are presented. The use of these codes is put into perspective, treating in detail the example of the Compact LInear Collider (CLIC) beam delivery system (3 TeV option).