On the numerical scheme employed in gyrotron interaction simulations

We report on the influence of the numerical scheme employed in gyrotron interaction simulations. Results obtained with the Crank-Nicolson scheme are compared with those obtained with the Backward Time – Centred Space (BTCS) fully implicit scheme. We present realistic cases where, for discretisation parameters in the range usually used in gyrotron simulations, the results can be very different. Hence, the numerical scheme used can be responsible for obscuring the underlying physics if its convergence is not tested carefully.