Reproducibility of Particle-In-Cell Simulations in Plasma Physics

Stefan Tietze

Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations are widely used to simulate the interaction of an ultra high intensity laser with a plasma. Although the underlying physics is the same in all cases, different codes will produce slightly different results. This is due to different numerical methods used to solve the differential equations describing the physics. Even when using the same PIC code in different versions, the results can differ, if the numerical methods or the implementation of certain features has been changed. In this talk, I will share the experiences I made with different PIC codes and propose a solution for open-source codes.