[noobermin]

Going +1 on this. I'm not an engineer, but I'm a plasma physicist who lives doing Particle-in-Cell sims, so a very different regime and perspective.

Accuracy isn't really at the forefront of our concerns because most EM solvers since the 70's are good enough in those terms, and going to higher order methods aren't worth it for us if it is so much slower. What we need is speed. For me, give me a way to do 50 simulations in a month that are converged enough that allow me to do a parameter scan over laser phase, focal point, etc. Allow me to do more 3D simulations. That what I need. The reason is that for me, plasma is so fuzzy anyway that the nth term error in the expansion pales in comparison to if laser focuses half a micron off target, which is a much more common source of error bars in a real experiment.

I imagine it's similar for engineers, our solvers are good enough for most problems, just make them faster and allow us to do more 3D simulations in shorter time.

[madengr]

I went to a defense oriented EM conference about 25 years ago. One of the military guys slams a TWT down on the table and says he'll pay $1M to model this; he was serious. Of course now I can buy CST particle studio. I assume it's feasible now.

[carapace]

(Traveling-wave tube?)

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(Edit: What a cool device!! I've just been reading up on them and Wowee! I'm in the wrong field. No pun intend.)

[madengr]

Yep. Any sort of particle & wave interaction; klystrons, TWT, magnetrons, etc. with nonlinear and thermal effects rolled in. Nasty problems.