Boundary conditions for the solution of the 3-dimensional Poisson equation in open metallic enclosures

Abstract

Numerical solution of the Poisson equation in metallic enclosures, open at one or more ends, is important in many practical situations such as High Power Microwave (HPM) or photo-cathode devices. It requires imposition of a suitable boundary condition at the open end. In this paper, methods for solving the Poisson equation are investigated for various charge densities and aspect ratios of the open ends. It is found that a mixture of second order and third order local asymptotic boundary condition (ABC) is best suited for large aspect ratios while a proposed non-local matching method, based on the solution of the Laplace equation, scores well when the aspect ratio is near unity for all charge density variations, including ones where the centre of charge is close to an open end or the charge density is non-localized. The two methods complement each other and can be used in electrostatic calculations where the computational domain needs to be terminated at the open boundaries of the metallic enclosure.