학술논문

CPIC: A Curvilinear Particle-in-Cell Code for Plasma–Material Interaction Studies
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci. Plasma Science, IEEE Transactions on. 41(12):3577-3587 Dec, 2013
Subject
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
Plasmas
Space vehicles
Interpolation
Geometry
Robustness
Jacobian matrices
Measurement
Simulation software
spacecraft charging
Language
ISSN
0093-3813
1939-9375
Abstract
We describe a new electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) code in curvilinear geometry called curvilinear PIC (CPIC). The code models the microscopic (kinetic) evolution of a plasma with the PIC method, coupled with an adaptive computational grid that can conform to arbitrarily shaped domains. CPIC is particularly suited for multiscale problems associated with the interaction of complex objects with plasmas. A map is introduced between the physical space and the logical space, where the grid is uniform and Cartesian. In CPIC, most of the operations are performed in logical space. CPIC was designed following criteria of versatility, robustness, and performance. Its main features are the use of structured meshes, a scalable field solver based on the black box multigrid algorithm and a hybrid mover, where particles' position is in logical space while the velocity is in physical space. Test examples involving the interaction of a plasma with material boundaries are presented.