One can make use of a Poisson solver for the ion fields by setting field_calculation_method to "poisson"; this is presently the recommended method. The Poisson solver uses the FFTW library and is both more stable and faster than the other methods.
Older alternatives that, though not as good as the Poisson solver, are still more accurate than the gaussian approximation for ion fields are sums of two or three gaussians, or sums of two or three lorentzians, which can be invoked by setting field_calculation_method to "gaussianfit", "bigaussian", "trigaussian", "bilorentzian", or "trilorentzian"; these are collectively referred to as “histogram fitting methods” below. In the gaussian-fit case, the charge distribution is of the form
| (7) |
where G(q,h,σ,c) = hexp-(q - c)2∕(2σ2). In the bigaussian case, the charge distribution is of the form
| (8) |
The charge distribution for the bilorentzian is
| (9) |
where L(q,h,a,c) = h∕(1 + (q - c)2∕a2).
The user is strongly advised to study the ion histograms by using the ion_histogram_output parameter to request this data. The histograms should not be excessively noisy. The data also includes the fits, which should be close to the data. (For “gaussian” mode, this is generally not possible.) A sample command to examine the histograms and fits for the y plane (generally the most difficult) is
The Poisson solver option makes use of the FFTW library (http://www.fftw.org/). This library must be installed for the Poisson solver to work. The Poisson equation is solved over the full ion_span.
linear_chromatic_tracking_setup