An Open Source, Three-Dimensional Kinetic Code for Modelling Low-Temperature Plasmas on Modern Supercomputing Architectures

Over the past four years the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has been developing a new kinetic particle-in-cell code designed for use by the low-temperature plasma community. The code, LTP-PIC models complex geometry on a uniform Cartesian mesh in two and three dimensions, incorporating a geometric multigrid linear algebra solver for the Poisson equation. LTP-PIC can handle an arbitrary number of charged species, which can interact with a uniform neutral background via elastic and inelastic collisional processes, including ionization and charge exchange. Surface interactions including secondary electron emission and charge accumulation on dielectric surfaces can also be modelled.

These capabilities are demonstrated through simulations of various plasma devices such as Hall thrusters, Penning discharges, and CCP-RF discharges. The code is designed from the ground up for performance and scalability, demonstrated on several high-performance clusters, including heterogenous CPU+GPU systems. LTP-PIC is also portable and can be run on systems ranging from personal computers to supercomputers. With a recent open-source release on GitHub we welcome the low-temperature plasma community, and others in need of a robust electrostatic PIC code, to engage with us on using and improving LTP-PIC.