Issue I452.3 [enhancement,prog,81,resolved] New ion_effective_charge reserved variable. The ion_charge variable contains the per-particle charge in elementary charge units. However, when charge repulsion features are used (Beam, Coulombic, or Factor repulsion), each traced particle can represent more than one real particle (possibly millions). The precise number is controlled by the global charge repulsion amount on the Particles tab (or the sim_repulsion_amount variable -- Issue I452.2) and the charge-weighting-factors on the individual particles (or the ion_cwf -- Issue I452). The ion_charge variable does not take any of this into account. As of 8.0.5-TEST20, a new ion_effective_charge variable is available. This value contains the real charge represented by the particle. When Coulombic or Factor repulsion is used, each particle traced represents a point (or cloud) of charges, and ion_effective_charge represents the total charge (in elementary charge units) of that point. When Beam repulsion is used, each particle trajectory instead represents a current (in A). That is a density of charge B<per> time or distance traveled, so it's not as clear how to define ion_effective_charge. We choose ion_effective_charge to represent the charge (in elementary charge units) in the current time-step. Current (in A) can be obtained by 1E+6 * 1.6021773349E-19 * ion_effective_charge / ion_time_step. (In the initialize segment, ion_time_step is not defined; but you can treat it as 1 microsecond in the above formula.) ion_effective_charge can be read anywhere ion_charge can be read. It is not writable. Added in 8.1 early access mode (8.0.5-TEST20).