calculation of voltage transients in multi linear cells
Passive propagation for MultiLinearCell objects as constructed with the MultiLinearCellEditor and ClampConfigEditor interfaces.
The calculation requires the cell itself, a Clampconfig object, the time step, total running time, and the space discretization to be applied to the structure. The structure is divided into segments with equal integral of the square root of the radius, given by the field disqrtr (micron 3/2). This balances the charging rate of points in the final discretization and its definition is independent of the electrical properties of the membrane. It provides a more consistent discretization than the electrotonic length, and is valid in the absence of persistent currents.
Tapering segments are treated as such and not approximated by a series of cylinders. The discretization does, however, respect the actual points of the structure to which clamps or recorders may be attached, so if points are placed closer together than the specified disqrtr, they are not merged.
The calculation uses the conventional in-place Gaussian elimination method for diffusion on branched networks (aka Hines' method). The results are the voltage at each of the recorders specified in the ClampConfig at each timestep of the calculation.