THE GUIDING CENTER APPROXIMATION IN LOWEST ORDER,

Abstract

The report is concerned with a simple and direct derivation of the equations governing the motion of a charged particle in space and time dependent electric and magnetic fields in the so-called guiding center approximation. Attention is given exclusively to results in lowest order in an expansion in reciprocal powers of the cyclotron frequency. As is well known, results to lowest order are the most frequently employed for practical as well as for didactic reasons. Yet, to the author's knowledge, there appear to be no elementary derivations of these results, which are at once general and comprehensive, but which do not employ the complicated machinery of the formal asymptotic expansions of Bogolyubov and Zubarev and of Kruskal.

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1966
Accession Number
AD0641281

Entities

People

  • Alfredo Banos Jr.

Organizations

  • University of California, Los Angeles

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Asymptotic Series
  • Charged Particles
  • Cyclotrons
  • Equations
  • Frequency
  • Magnetic Fields
  • Mathematics
  • Particles

Readers

  • Control Systems Engineering.
  • Plasma Physics / Magnetohydrodynamics
  • Systems Analysis and Design

Technology Areas

  • Space