# Sum Currents¶

This plugin computes the total current integrated/added over the entire volume simulated.

## .cfg file¶

The plugin can be activated by setting a non-zero value with the command line flag --sumcurr.period. The value set with --sumcurr.period is the periodicity, at which the total current is computed. E.g. --sumcurr.period 100 computes and prints the total current for time step 0, 100, 200, ….

negligible.

negligible.

## Output¶

The result is printed to standard output. Therefore, it goes both to ./simOutput/output as well as to the output file specified by the machine used (usually the stdout file in the main directory of the simulation). The output is ASCII-text only. It has the following format:

[ANALYSIS] [_rank] [COUNTER] [SumCurrents] [_currentTimeStep] {_current.x _current.y _current.z} Abs:_absCurrent


Value

Description

Unit

_rank

MPI rank at which prints the particle position

none

_currentTimeStep

simulation time step = number of PIC cycles

none

_current.x _current.y _current.z

electric current

Ampere per second

_absCurrent

magnitude of current

Ampere per second

In order to extract only the total current information from the output stored in stdout, the following command on a bash command line could be used:

grep SumCurrents stdout > totalCurrent.dat


The plugin data is then stored in totalCurrent.dat.

## Known Issues¶

Currently, both output and stdout are overwritten at restart. All data from the plugin is lost, if these file are not backuped manually.