Full particle orbit effects in regular and stochastic magnetic fields

TL;DR

This study numerically investigates charged particle trajectories in complex magnetic fields, revealing how stochasticity, resonance overlap, and magnetic barriers influence particle confinement and orbit behavior in plasma physics.

Contribution

It introduces a full Lorentz force numerical approach to analyze particle orbits, uncovering stochastic effects and magnetic barrier interactions in reversed-shear magnetic configurations.

Findings

Particle orbits can be stochastic even when magnetic field lines are not.

Resonance overlapping causes Hamiltonian chaos in particle trajectories.

Magnetic ITBs act as energy-dependent particle confinement filters.

Abstract

We present a numerical study of charged particle motion in a time-independent magnetic field in cylindrical geometry. The magnetic field model consists of an unperturbed reversed-shear helical part and a perturbation consisting of a superposition of modes. Contrary to most of the previous studies, the particle trajectories are computed by directly solving the full Lorentz force equations of motion in a six-dimensional phase space using a sixth-order, implicit, symplectic Gauss-Legendre method. The level of stochasticity in the particle orbits is diagnosed using averaged, effective Poincare sections. It is shown that when only one mode is present the particle orbits can be stochastic even though the magnetic field line orbits are not stochastic. The lack of integrability of the particle orbits in this case is related to separatrix crossing and the breakdown of the global conservation of the magnetic moment. Some perturbation consisting of two modes creates resonance overlapping, leading to Hamiltonian chaos in magnetic field lines. Then, the particle orbits exhibit a nontrivial dynamics depending on their energy and pitch angle. It is shown that the regions where the particle motion is stochastic decrease as the energy increases. The non-monotonicity of the $q$-profile implies the existence of magnetic ITBs which correspond to shearless flux surfaces located in the vicinity of the $q$-profile minimum. It is shown that depending on the energy, these magnetic ITBs might or might not confine particles. That is, magnetic ITBs act as an energy-dependent particle confinement filter. Magnetic field lines in reversed-shear configurations exhibit topological bifurcations due to separatrix reconnection. We show that a similar but more complex scenario appears in the case of particle orbits that depends in a non-trivial way on the energy and pitch angle of the particles.