A small selection of what JC-PIC produces β phase-space and profile animations, wave spectra and swarm-mode plots exported straight from the diagnostic viewers. Each comes from a bundled test case you can load and reproduce in a few clicks.
A beam injected into a vacuum gap above the space-charge limit forms a virtual cathode that, beyond a second threshold, begins to oscillate.
Electron phase space (x, vβ). A beam injected above the space-charge limit builds a potential minimum that traps and reflects electrons, then oscillates.
π Case description in the Library β
The electrostatic potential profile evolving in a low-current thermionic discharge, where ionization is spatially separated from the emitter by an internal double layer.
π Case description in the Library βIn the temperature-limited mode, the beam accelerated across the cathode sheath drives a beamβplasma (Langmuir-wave) instability in the bulk.
Electron phase space in the temperature-limited mode: the cold sheath-accelerated beam destabilizes against the bulk and rolls up into phase-space holes.
π Case description in the Library β
A dilute, high-velocity electron beam interacting with a dense stationary background β the classic two-population kinetic instability, in clean periodic form.
π Case description in the Library βThe cleanest periodic-mode beam instabilities β the very phenomena one-dimensional PIC was first built to teach.
Two counter-streaming electron beams at Β±vβ through a neutralizing background. The free energy of their relative motion winds phase space into the iconic cat's-eye vortices.
π Case description in the Library β
The electric-field profile growing as a global electron drift destabilizes against the ions β the instability Buneman discovered in 1959.
π Case description in the Library βThese are just a handful of cases. Browse the full case library β RF discharges, striations, magnetized EΓB plasmas and more, each with its documented description. See the user manual for the viewers.
Two of JC-PIC's quantitative faces: the built-in (k, Ο) Fourier analysis of the spaceβtime diagnostics, and the Swarm mode computing the electron transport coefficients of a Boltzmann solver by direct Monte-Carlo simulation.
The 2D Fourier transform of the ion-density xβt diagram in a discharge generating ion-acoustic waves: the fluctuation energy lines up on the ion-acoustic branch, with the theoretical dispersion overlaid and the on-branch energy fraction reported.
π FFT Analysis chapter in the manual β
Legendre components FββFβ of the electron velocity distribution in nitrogen at 100 Td, computed by the Swarm mode β directly comparable with Fig. 7(a) of the MCIG paper (Hagelaar, Phys. Plasmas, 2025), and a direct view of where the two-term approximation holds.
π Swarm chapters in the manual β