A novel numerical method has been developed that incorporates electrically conducting objects into particle-in-cell simulations of electrostatic plasma. The method allows multiple objects connected by voltage and current sources in an arbitrary circuit topology. Moreover, by means of an unstructured mesh, the objects can have arbitrary shapes. The electric potential of the objects is solved self-consistently by incorporating charge constraints into the finite element discretization of the Poisson equation. This method has been implemented in a new code, Particles-in-Unstructured-Cells (PUNC), suitable for rapid prototyping. The flexibility of this code has proven convenient to survey various methods, and an issue of reduced convergence rate of today’s unstructured plasma–object interaction codes is highlighted. The results for a conducting sphere immersed in the Maxwellian plasma are in good agreement with previous studies.

中文翻译：

---

非结构化胞内粒子等离子体-物体相互作用模拟中完美电导体电路的新方法

已经开发出一种新的数值方法，该方法将导电物体结合到静电等离子体的粒子胞内模拟中。该方法允许在任意电路拓扑中通过电压源和电流源连接多个对象。此外，通过非结构化网格，对象可以具有任意形状。通过将电荷约束合并到泊松方程的有限元离散化中，可以自洽地求解物体的电势。该方法已在新代码 Particles-in-Unstructured-Cells (PUNC) 中实现，适用于快速原型制作。该代码的灵活性已被证明可以方便地调查各种方法，并且突出了当今非结构化等离子体 - 对象交互代码收敛速度降低的问题。