2D ArcPIC Code Description: Description of Methods and User / Developer Manual (second edition)

Vacuum discharges are one of the main limiting factors for future linear collider designs such as that of the Compact LInear Collider (CLIC). 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 ArcPIC code introduced here. We present an exhaustive description of the 2D ArcPIC code in several parts. In the first chapter, we introduce the particle-in-cell method in general and detail the techniques used in the code. In the second chapter, we describe the code and provide a documentation and derivation of the key equations occurring in it. In the third chapter, we describe utilities for running the code and analyzing the results. The last chapter contains suggestions for viable and useful avenues for further work on the code. The code and documentation are original work of the authors, written in 2010–2014, and is therefore under the copyright of the authors.