According to the “leap frog” algorithm used for the PIC-MC computation, the electric and magnetic field / potentials are computed per nodes rather than per cell. A cell “node” is one of the corner points of the cell, i.e. a rectangular cell has 8 nodes. The nodes are shared with the neighboring cells.

The file format is GMSH POS. However the node oriented data have one element more in each direction. This may cause issues in postprocessing together with cell oriented data. For an example, in the RIG-VM postprocessing routines cell oriented and node oriented data shall be processed in separate postprocessing objects.

The choice of electric / magnetic field and potential output can be done within the list FIELD in the parameter file. Possible choices are

• Capacitively coupled plasma (CCP)
  • “PHI” - Electric potential (momentary snapshot)
  • “PHI_MEAN” - Electric potential, time averaged over the last time averaging period
  • “E” - Electric field as gradient of PHI (momentary snapshot)
• Inductively coupled plasma (ICP)
  • “JC” - Primary current, i.e. coil surface current density
  • “JE” - Secondary current, i.e. electron current (convection current) in plasma
  • “EC” - Primary current induced electric field
  • “EE” - Secondary current induced electric field
  • “BC” - Magnetic field as curl of EC
  • “BE” - Magnetic field as curl of EE

In the following example, the time averaged electric potential and the electric field are plotted:

FIELD = ["PHI_MEAN", "E"];