Virtual Prototyping of Directed Energy Weapons

This paper reports on radio frequency (RF) sources that have been virtually-prototyped with the Improved Concurrent Electromagnetic Particle-in-Cell (ICEPIC) 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. Our simulations focus on several proposed variants of the L-band A66 half height (A66-hh) relativistic magnetron HPM source. The variations of the A66-hh include higher frequency designs (C-band, S-band and X-band), and a design that uses permanent magnets at L-band instead of electromagnets. Such simulations require enormous computational resources. Simulations exposed undesirable features in the first iteration of these designs and by the visualization and analysis of the simulation solutions became apparent. In the next iteration of the design, the simulations did not have these undesirable features.