A particle-in-cell implementation of intra-beam scattering for Xsuite

Intra-Beam Scattering (IBS) remains one of the primary mechanisms of emittance blow-up and performance degradation in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator chain. The phenomenon is particularly relevant following the recent injector upgrades to achieve the high-brightness beams required for the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) era. Traditional IBS models, as those already implemented in Xsuite, rely on the assumption of Gaussian beam distributions. However, observations in the CERN complex indicate the presence of q-Gaussian beam profiles, for which these models do not accurately reproduce IBS effects. To address this limitation, a Particle-In-Cell (PIC) approach was developed that operates independently of distribution assumptions. This methodology behind the PIC approach, and benchmarks against existing models as well as experimental data from the LHC are presented in this contribution. Current limitations are also discussed.