Second-order, exact charge conservation for electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulation in complex geometry

A second-order, exact charge-conserving algorithm for accumulating charge and current on the spatial grid for electromagnetic particle-in-cell (EM-PIC) simulation in bounded geometry is presented. The algorithm supports standard EM-PIC exterior boundary conditions and complex internal conductors on non-uniform grids. Boundary surfaces are handled by smoothly transitioning from second to first-order weighting within half a cell of the boundary. When a particle is exactly on the boundary surface (either about to be killed, or just created), the weighting is fully first-order. This means that particle creation and particle/surface interaction models developed for first-order weighting do not need to be modified. An additional feature is the use of an energy-conserving interpolation scheme from the electric field on the grid to the particles. Results show that high-density, cold plasmas with omega(pe) Delta t similar to 1, and Delta(x)/lambda(D) >> 1, can be modeled with reasonable accuracy and good energy conservation. This opens up a significant new capability for explicit simulation of high-density plasmas in high-power devices. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.