Comparison of High Power Microwave Source Performance Between Different Particle-In-Cell Codes at the Naval Research Laboratory

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) is currently in creasing its capability to perform high fidelity particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of high power microwave (HPM) sources. Different PIC codes are available from commercial, government, and open source efforts, including LSP, ICEPIC, and VSim. Most of the algorithms in these codes are similar, but some algorithms important to high power microwave simulations are different, such as the exact treatment of fields at curved surfaces, the particle emission algorithms, and the energy conservation properties on various mesh resolutions. Understanding how these differences affect simulation results is the goal of this work. The codes will be benchmarked by looking at the simulations of a radial planar magnetron (RPM) at a frequency of 1 GHz. The simulated performance of the RPM HPM source will be evaluated across these codes on supercomputing clusters, comparing typical HPM source parameters of interest such as predicted output power as well as typical numerical metrics such as CPU runtimes. As part of the evaluation process, a list strengths and weaknesses will be generated for each of the codes taking in to account the workflow of the code and any ancillary tools used in the execution of the code.