Analysis of Adaptive Mesh Refinement methods for FDTD particle-in-cell techniques for EM simulations

Summary form only given. For electromagnetic simulations with particles, the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) technique originally proposed by Yee is still prevalent. However, this technique can be computationally unfeasible when solving large domains with small geometric features such as is typical in many HPM devices. One approach is to resolve geometrically and physically small features with areas of high mesh refinement, while the bulk of the problem is resolved with a coarser mesh. As the problem evolves, such areas of refinement can move to account for changing physics, ensuring efficient coverage of the problem domain. Such techniques are called Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) techniques. We are presenting the results from a refinement study for a conformal planar and a non-conformal circular magnetron. These results are focus on the refinement requirements within these devices as a function of space and time. From these results, we are postulate a scheme for accurately resolving the physics of the device and estimate the expected efficiency of adaptive techniques to solve such problems.