Multiple platform application of 3D CAD PIC simulations in pulsed power

Summary form only given, as follows. With the availability of 80-125 MHz microprocessors, the methodology developed for the simulation of problems in pulsed power and plasma physics on modern day ´supercomputers´ is now amenable to application on a wide range of platforms including laptops and workstations. These tools vastly reduce the tasks of laying out complicated conducting and dielectric boundaries and regions, placing diagnostic probes, designating wave launching and particle emitting surfaces, and specifying temporal and spatial properties of externally applied potentials and magnetic fields, respectively. This paper reports on the adaptation of IVORY, a three-dimensional, fully-electromagnetic, particle-in-cell simulation code, to this platform independent CAD environment. The primary purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how rapidly a pulsed power/plasma problem can be scoped out by an experimenter on a dedicated workstation. This involves the point and click drafting of the simulation setup, the real time execution of the simulation, and pull-down menus for the display of particles and fields; time-history data such as energies, fluxes, currents, and voltages; and Rogowski, Faraday cup, and calorimeter measurements. Demonstrations include a magnetically insulated transmission line, power flow in a graded insulator stack, a relativistic klystron oscillator, and the dynamics of a coaxial thruster for space applications. Comparisons of runs on Cray, HP700 and Power Macintosh machines suggest that solutions to many problems can be explored and optimized on workstations before they are brought to fine detail analysis on large scale machines.