- Steiniger, Klaus;
- Widera, Rene;
- Bastrakov, Sergei;
- Bussmann, Michael;
- Chandrasekaran, Sunita;
- Hernandez, Benjamin;
- Holsapple, Kristina;
- Huebl, Axel;
- Juckeland, Guido;
- Kelling, Jeffrey;
- Leinhauser, Matt;
- Pausch, Richard;
- Rogers, David;
- Schramm, Ulrich;
- Young, Jeff;
- Debus, Alexander
We present EZ, a novel current deposition algorithm for particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. EZ calculates the current density on the electromagnetic grid due to macro-particle motion within a time step by solving the continuity equation of electrodynamics. Being a charge conserving hybridization of Esirkepov's method and ZigZag, we refer to it as “EZ” as shorthand for “Esirkepov meets ZigZag”. Simulations of a warm, relativistic plasma with PIConGPU show that EZ achieves the same level of charge conservation as the commonly used method by Esirkepov, yet reaches higher performance for macro-particle assignment-functions up to third-order. In addition to a detailed description of the functioning of EZ, reasons for the expected and observed performance increase are given, and guidelines for its implementation aiming at highest performance on GPUs are provided.