A novel approach for modeling high-current, charged particle beams in a three-dimensional manner is introduced. While the integration of beam motion equations is done as in completely 3D particle-in-cell codes, the space charge forces are found by an approximately self-consistent inclusion of the transverse and longitudinal fields. The algorithm is dramatically faster than fully 3D algorithms with computational times comparable to 2D field solvers. In addition, a sparser spatial grid and fewer required macroparticles provide significantly reduced memory demands. The proposed sub-3D technique has been verified with good agreement with other independent algorithms.
