Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Energy-conserving perfect-conductor boundary conditions for an implicit, curvilinear Darwin particle-in-cell algorithm

Journal Article · · Journal of Computational Physics

We propose here a conservative prescription for perfect-conductor boundary conditions for a Darwin particle-in-cell (PIC) model on curvilinear meshes and arbitrarily shaped boundaries. The Darwin model is a subset of Maxwell's equation in which the electromagnetic mode (light wave) has been analytically removed. This renders the Darwin formulation elliptic, instead of hyperbolic. Historically, Darwin-PIC practitioners have had difficulty implementing a well-posed set of boundary conditions for realistic applications. In this study, we demonstrate the well-posedness and effectiveness of a simple boundary-condition prescription for perfect conductors of specified potential and of arbitrary shape in multiple dimensions, using a recently developed conservative, implicit Darwin-PIC algorithm. The boundary conditions conserve the electromagnetic energy, and preserve the Coulomb gauge of the vector potential, ·A=0 exactly. We demonstrate that global energy is exactly conserved in curvilinear, simply-connected domains in the specific case of particles reflecting off perfect conductors.

Research Organization:
Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) (SC-21); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
89233218CNA000001
OSTI ID:
1511229
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1547490
Report Number(s):
LA-UR--18-21246
Journal Information:
Journal of Computational Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Computational Physics Vol. 391; ISSN 0021-9991
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Similar Records

A curvilinear, fully implicit, conservative electromagnetic PIC algorithm in multiple dimensions
Journal Article · 2016 · Journal of Computational Physics · OSTI ID:1255248

Construction and response of a highly granular scintillator-based electromagnetic calorimeter
Journal Article · 2018 · Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research. Section A, Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment · OSTI ID:1477880