AN OBJECT-ORIENTED ELECTROMAGNETIC PIC CODE

The object-oriented paradigm provides an opportunity for advanced PIC modeling, increased flexibility, and extensibility. Particle-in-cell c odes for simulating plasmas are traditionally written in structured FO RTRAN or C. This has resulted in large legacy codes which are difficul t to maintain and extend with new models. In this ongoing research, we apply the object-oriented design technique to address these issues. T he resulting code architecture, OOPIC (object-oriented particle-in-cel l), is a two-dimensional relativistic electromagnetic PIC code. The ob ject-oriented implementation of the algorithms is described, including an integral-form field solve, and a piecewise current deposition and particle position update. The architecture encapsulates key PIC algori thms and data into objects, simplifying extensions such as new boundar y conditions and field algorithms.