Version info:

The SPARTA "version" is the date when it was released, such as 3 Mar 2014. SPARTA is updated continuously. Whenever we fix a bug or add a feature, we release it immediately, and post a notice on this page of the WWW site. Each dated copy of SPARTA contains all the features and bug-fixes up to and including that version date. The version date is printed to the screen and logfile every time you run SPARTA. It is also in the file src/version.h and in the SPARTA directory name created when you unpack a tarball, and at the top of the first page of the manual (this page).

• If you browse the HTML doc pages on the SPARTA WWW site, they always describe the most current version of SPARTA.
• If you browse the HTML doc pages included in your tarball, they describe the version you have.
• The PDF file on the WWW site or in the tarball is updated about once per month. This is because it is large, and we don't want it to be part of very patch.
• At some point, there also will be a Developer.pdf file in the doc directory, which describes the internal structure and algorithms of SPARTA. NOTE: as of 21 Apr 2015, this file is not yet available.

SPARTA stands for Stochastic PArallel Rarefied-gas Time-accurate Analyzer.

SPARTA is a Direct Simulation Montel Carlo (DSMC) simulator designed to run efficiently on parallel computers. It was developed at Sandia National Laboratories, a US Department of Energy facility, with funding from the DOE. It is an open-source code, distributed freely under the terms of the GNU Public License (GPL), or sometimes by request under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

The primary developers of SPARTA are Steve Plimpton, and Michael Gallis who can be contacted at sjplimp,magalli at sandia.gov. The SPARTA WWW Site at http://sparta.sandia.gov has more information about the code and its uses.

The SPARTA documentation is organized into the following sections. If you find errors or omissions in this manual or have suggestions for useful information to add, please send an email to the developers so we can improve the SPARTA documentation.

Once you are familiar with SPARTA, you may want to bookmark this page at Section_commands.html#comm since it gives quick access to documentation for all SPARTA commands.

PDF file of the entire manual, generated by htmldoc

1. Introduction
   1.1 What is SPARTA
   1.2 SPARTA features
   1.3 Grids and surfaces in SPARTA
   1.4 Open source distribution
   1.5 Acknowledgments and citations
   
2. Getting started
   2.1 What's in the SPARTA distribution
   2.2 Making SPARTA
   2.3 Building SPARTA with optional packages
   2.4 Building SPARTA as a library
   2.5 Running SPARTA
   2.6 Command-line options
   2.7 Screen output
   
3. Commands
   3.1 SPARTA input script
   3.2 Parsing rules
   3.3 Input script structure
   3.4 Commands listed by category
   3.5 Commands listed alphabetically
   
4. How-to discussions
   4.1 2d simulations
   4.2 Axisymmetric simulations
   4.3 Running multiple simulations from one input script
   4.4 Output from SPARTA
   4.5 Visualizing SPARTA snapshots
   4.6 Library interface to SPARTA
   4.7 Coupling SPARTA to other codes
   4.8 Details of grid geometry in SPARTA
   4.9 Details of surfaces in SPARTA
   4.10 Restarting a simulation
   4.11 Using the ambipolar approximation
   
5. Example problems
6. Performance & scalability
7. Additional tools
8. Modifying & extending SPARTA
9. Python interface
   9.1 Extending Python with a serial version of SPARTA
   9.2 Creating a shared MPI library
   9.3 Extending Python with a parallel version of SPARTA
   9.4 Extending Python with MPI
   9.5 Testing the Python-SPARTA interface
   9.6 Using SPARTA from Python
   9.7 Example Python scripts that use SPARTA
   
10. Errors
    10.1 Common problems
    10.2 Reporting bugs
    10.3 Error & warning messages
    
11. Future and history
    11.1 Coming attractions
    11.2 Past versions