PICsar: A 2.5D Axisymmetric, Relativistic, Electromagnetic, Particle in Cell Code with a Radiation Absorbing Boundary
arXiv:1407.1810 · doi:10.1016/j.newast.2014.09.006
Abstract
We present PICsar -- a new Particle in Cell code geared towards efficiently simulating the magnetosphere of the aligned rotator. PICsar is a special relativistic, electromagnetic, charge conservative code that can be used to simulate arbitrary electromagnetics problems in axisymmetry. It features stretchable body-fitted coordinates that follow the surface of a sphere, simplifying the application of boundary conditions in the case of the aligned rotator; a radiation absorbing outer boundary, which allows a steady state to be set up dynamically and maintained indefinitely from transient initial conditions; and algorithms for injection of charged particles into the simulation domain. The code is parallelized using MPI and scales well to a large number of processors. We discuss the numerical methods used in PICsar and present tests of the code. In particular, we show that PICsar can accurately and efficiently simulate the magnetosphere of the aligned monopole rotator in the force free limit. We present simulations of the aligned dipole rotator in a forthcoming paper.
14 pages, 7 figures. Published in New Astronomy
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- Dissipation, Energy Transfer, and Spindown Luminosity in 2.5D PIC Simulations of the Pulsar Magnetosphere
- Fermi Gamma-Ray Pulsars: Understanding the High-Energy Emission from Dissipative Magnetospheres
- Evolution of non-spherical pulsars with plasma-filled magnetospheres
- Particle acceleration in relativistic magnetic flux-merging events
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- Comptonization by Reconnection Plasmoids in Black Hole Coronae II: Electron-Ion Plasma
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- Spatial Distribution of Pair Production over the Pulsar Polar Cap
- Particle Acceleration in Pulsar Wind Nebulae: PIC modelling
- Particle-in-cell simulations of pulsar magnetospheres: transition between electrosphere and force-free regimes
- OSIRIS-GR: General relativistic activation of the polar cap of a compact neutron star
- Magnetic frame-dragging correction to the electromagnetic solution of a compact neutron star