NEW PIC CODES ON UNSTRUCTURED MESHES APPLIED TO THE SIMULATION OF A PHOTOCATHODE INJECTOR

There is a great interest in developing simulation methods that are more appropriate to the geometrical complexity of real devices. To approach geometric realism, we have investigated two different numerical methods to solve Maxwell's equations in r-z geometries: (1) a conforming finite-element formulation, (2) a finite-volume formulation on Delaunay-Voronoi meshes. We describe the design of two prototype PIC codes called VLAMINCK and MATISSE which apply these methods on unstructured meshes to fully electromagnetic particle simulation. Both codes are tested on a simplified injector geometry and the results are compared to those obtain with the MASK code using finite-difference formulation.