Recent developments in the 3D, electromagnetic, particle-in-cell code, QUICKSILVER

Summary form only given, QUICKSILVER code has been developed for performing charged-particle simulations in three dimensions using finite-difference, electromagnetic, particle-in-cell (PIC) techniques. QUICKSILVER has been designed to make advantageous use of vector, multiple-CPU computers with large central memory and fast, out-of-memory storage. Integral to QUICKSILVER´s use are a user-friendly preprocessor, MERCURY, and several postprocessors for displaying various types of data. The MERCURY preprocessor is designed to allow the rapid setup of complex 3-D simulations while minimizing the errors that might be associated with that setup. MERCURY supports all the modeling capabilities of QUICKSILVER, as well as giving limited support (e.g., mesh generation) for other codes. Several postprocessors are used to analyze the wealth of data that can be produced by large 3-D codes. QUICKSILVER and its associated pre- and postprocessors reside on several different machines. This has necessitated the development of a portable file format which allows data to be transported among the various machines in an efficient, machine-independent binary file format