Inconsistent initialization of electric field-dependent quantities when E_field is initialized from j_tot
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It turns out that when E_field
is initialized from j_tot
(i.e. a current density profile is prescribed), and f_re
is initialized according to an avalanche distribution, the distribution function will end up initialized with E_field=0
. The cause for this is the fact that to avoid a circular dependency, E_field
must be initialized to 0 at the start of the initialization cycle, after which RunawayFluid
can be initialized, followed again by an initialization of E_field
from j_tot
and the conductivity (contained in RunawayFluid
).
Since E_field
will be initialized at the start of the initialization, and since j_tot
depends on j_re
(and thereby f_re
), f_re
will be initialized with E_field=0
and therefore become zero.
A better approach to initializing f_re
would be to allow the user to provide the E_field
profile to use. Yet another alternative could be to separate the conductivity from RunawayFluid
, as suggested in #84.