2D arc-PIC code description: methods and documentation

Vacuum discharges are one of the main limiting factors for future linear collider designs such as that of the Compact LInear Collider. To optimize machine efficiency, maintaining the highest feasible accelerating gradient below a certain breakdown rate is desirable; understanding breakdowns can therefore help us to achieve this goal. As a part of ongoing theoretical research on vacuum discharges at the Helsinki Institute of Physics, the build-up of plasma can be investigated through the particle-in-cell method. For this purpose, we have developed the 2D Arc-PIC code introduced here. We present an exhaustive description of the 2D Arc-PIC code in two parts. In the first part, we introduce the particle-in-cell method in general and detail the techniques used in the code. In the second part, we provide a documentation and derivation of the key equations occurring in the code. The code is original work of the author, written in 2010, and is therefore under the copyright of the author. The development of the code has been carried out in frame of a collaboration between the Helsinki Institute of Physics and CERN. The professional guidance of Prof. R. Schneider and Ph.D. K. Matyash from the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik is gratefully acknowledged.