Virtual Prototyping of Directed Energy Weapons

This paper gives an overview of how RF sources may be virtually prototyped with the Improved Concurrent Electromagnetic Particle-in-Cell (ICEPIC) code. ICEPIC simulates from first principles (Maxwell's equations and Lorenz's force law) the electrodynamics and charged particle dynamics of the radio frequency (RF)-producing part of the system. Our simulations focus on two classes of sources: giga-watt L-band sources and megawatt W-band sources; the relativistic magnetron and gyrotron are shown as an example. Such simulations require enormous computational resources. These simulations successfully expose undesirable features of these sources and help us to suggest improvements.