Comparison of FDTD particle pushing and direct differencing of Boltzmann's equation for SGEMP problems

Abstract

Now that personal computers (PCs) have become so powerful, the question has arisen as to whether particle-pushing or Boltzmann's equation codes are more efficient/accurate for solving self-consistent SGEMP problems on a PC. In this article, in the interest of achieving a code comparison, similar 2-D problems are treated using the two approaches on a PC. When enough modeling detail is included to cause the two codes to yield similar accuracy, it appears the particle-pushing code is about five times faster than the Boltzmann code. This result is probably qualitatively applicable to most SGEMP problems, except those where secondary-emission effects are important. When significant secondary emission occurs, particle pushers would lose at least half of their efficiency advantage. It is likely that the conclusions presented here do not carry-over to massively parallel computer architectures. >