CHIPIC: A highly efficient code for electromagnetic PIC modeling and simulation

Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation is the most popular computational modeling of the interaction between charged particles and electromagnetic fields. Lots of PIC codes are written for simulating a wide range of challenging problems, including plasma physics, high power microwave devices, high power lasers, particle accelerators, and so forth. In this research, we design a highly efficient electromagnetic PIC code, called CHIPIC, which is applicable to almost all these problems. This code includes a computer aided design (CAD) system and a physical kernel. Considering the various complex physical models and numerical conditions in PIC simulation, the whole CAD system is divided into six functional modules and three system layers with object-oriented method, of which the six functional modules are basic setting, algorithmic setting, structural modeling, diagnostic setting, simulation control and data processing, and the system layers are user interface layer, data managing layer and computing interface layer. The physical kernel contains a mesh generator, two field solvers, a particle handler, an object manager and a data manager. It provides various algorithms and models to represent structural geometries, material properties, incoming and outgoing waves, particle emission processes and boundary conditions. In addition, powerful filter for numerical noise are also provided. This physical kernel can run on a single processor or in parallel mode. When it runs in parallel mode, the message pass interface (MPI) and open specifications for multiprocessing (OpenMP) is needed. At last, the validity of this electromagnetic PIC code is proved by simulating a magnetically insulated transmission line oscillator (MILO) tube.