Enhanced biDimensional pIc: an electrostatic/magnetostatic particle-in-cell code for plasma based systems

Abstract

EDI (enhanced biDimensional pIc) is a two-dimensional (2-D) electrostatic/magnetostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) code designed to optimize plasma based systems. The code is built on an unstructured mesh of triangles, allowing for arbitrary geometries. The PIC core is comprised of a Boris leapfrog scheme that can manage multiple species. Particle tracking locates particles in the mesh, using a fast and simple priority-sorting algorithm. A magnetic field with an arbitrary topology can be imposed to study the magnetized particle dynamics. The electrostatic fields are then computed by solving Poisson’s equation with a a finite element method solver. The latter is an external solver that has been properly modified in order to be integrated into EDI. The major advantage of using an external solver directly incorporated into the EDI structure is its strong flexibility, in fact it is possible to couple together different physical problems (electrostatic, magnetostatic, etc.). EDI is written in C, which allows the rapid development of new modules. A big effort in the development of the code has been made in optimization of the linking efficiency, in order to minimize computational time. Finally, EDI is a multiplatform (Linux, Mac OS X) software.