Charge conserving current weights for PIC: application to cylindrical coordinates

Summary form only given. Particle in cell (PIC) codes successfully model devices containing charged particles in electromagnetic fields. The presentation describes the derivation of current weights and prove that the result is charge conserving. The derivation is applied to cubes, prisms, and tetrahedrons in 3-D, and to rectangles and triangles in 2-D. When applied to cubes, the derivation recovers the well known Villasenor-Buneman current weights. The derivation is also used to find charge conserving current weights for PIC codes in cylindrical coordinates. Cells away from the cylindrical axis are mapped into cubes, and current weights are then found. Cells next to the cylindrical axis are mapped into triangular prisms, and current weights are found. The cylindrical coordinate current weights are shown to be charge conserving. The current weights in cylindrical coordinates are tested by implementation in the Improved Concurrent Electromagnetic Particle in Cell (ICEPIC) code.