Preliminary implementation of piecewise linear conformal boundaries in ICEPIC

Summary form only given, as follows. ICEPIC, developed by the air force research lab, is a 3-D particle-in-cell (PIC) code capable of being operated on parallel architectures using either the MPI or PVM message passing standards. ICEPIC utilizes a Cartesian coordinate-based grid system to simulate collisionless plasma physics phenomena, such as those that occur in high power microwave devices. Previous versions of ICEPIC represented curved boundaries by using ´stair-step´ approximations. These Cartesian grid ´stair-steps´ may cause inaccurate results in certain simulations, particularly in regions of extreme curvature. In order to increase the accuracy of the code, while retaining the computational ease of the Cartesian grid, various methods of embedded and conformal boundaries are considered. Preliminary results of tests of the accuracy and stability of these models are presented.