DIRECTED ENERGY PROFESSIONAL SOCIETY
JOURNAL OF DIRECTED ENERGY

Virtual Prototyping of Radio Frequency Weapons

Keith L. Cartwright, Andrew D. Greenwood, Peter J. Mardahl, Tony Murphy, and Michael D. Haworth
    Center for Plasma Theory and Computation, Directed Energy Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory,                            Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico 87117

This paper explains how radio frequency (RF) systems, from pulsed power through to antennas, can be virtually prototyped with the ICEPIC (Improved Concurrent Electromagnetic Particle-in-Cell) code. ICEPIC simulates from first principles (Maxwell’s equations and Lorenz’s force law) the electrodynamics and charged-particle dynamics of the RF-producing part of the system. We discuss features such as multiprocessing on distributed memory machines, dynamic load balancing, and the mitigation of numerical Cerenkov radiation in the field solve. Simulations focus on gigawatt-class sources; shown as an example will be the magnetically insulated line oscillator (MILO). Such simulations require enormous computational resources. Our simulations successfully expose undesirable features of these sources and have helped us to suggest improvements.

KEYWORDS: FDTD, ICEPIC, Parallel PIC, Plasma simulation