CASK: an electromagnetic and electrostatic particle-in-cell simulation code with conformal boundaries

Summary form only given, as follows. CASK maps a physical region onto a logical quadrilateral grid that represents the computational domain. The nonorthogonal mesh used in CASK is found by an elliptical solver that generates the mapping of the logical grid to fit conformally the physical boundaries of the simulation domain. A set of high-level subroutines has been written to compute numerically the gradient of meshwide scalars, as well as the divergence and curl operators for meshwide vector fields. The code contains both electrostatic and electromagnetic field solvers and particle orbit integration subroutines for plasma simulation. An efficient method has been developed for determining the cell location of particles on the mesh. The code has been used to find eigenmodes of cavities in the frequency domain, for transient electromagnetic problems, for intense electron beam injector design, and for simulation of a charge-collecting biased probe immersed in a plasma.<>