picFoam

picFoam is a fully kinetic solver for electrostatic problems in equilibrium and non-equilibrium plasmas based on the Particle-In-Cell method. The solver is an in-house development based on the open-source toolbox OpenFOAM and like its foundation released to the general public on [GitHub](https://github.com/TFDzarm/picFoam). As it is implemented using the finite volume method, used in OpenFOAM, it is possible to use arbitrary meshes and therewith investigate plasma phenomena in complex geometries. The solver includes state-of-the-art models which include relativistic as well as non-relativistic integration schemes for Newton’s 2nd law of motion describing the trajectory of charged particles. With the inclusion of modern relativistic  and non-relativistic Monte Carlo Collision schemes, its possible to model inter molecular forces that go beyond the long-ranging electromagnetic forces calculated from the distribution of the charged particles on the numerical mesh. These schemes include Coulomb collisions which become an important aspect of the behavior of plasma in high densities. Elastic collisions between electron and neutral atoms as well as inelastic collisions which include ionization events and excitation events. Besides this simple elastic collisions events between neutral atom species are also considered. At last picFoam also implements boundary conditions for linking external circuits to the plasma domain which allows for  a description of real plasma devices. Summarizing, picFoam can be seen as a general purpose tool for the description of electrostatic plasma phenomena which we looking forward to be an useful tool for everyone.

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