Splitting methods for time integration of trajectories in combined electric and magnetic fields

Abstract

The equations of motion of a single particle subject to an arbitrary electric and a static magnetic field form a Poisson system. We present a second-order time integration method which preserves well the Poisson structure and compare it to commonly used algorithms, such as the Boris scheme. All the methods are represented in a general framework of splitting methods. We use the so-called $\varphi$ functions, which give efficient ways for both analyzing and implementing the algorithms. Numerical experiments show an excellent long term stability for the new method considered.

arXiv comment14 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (1)

• An almost symmetric Strang splitting scheme for the construction of high order composition methods

Cited by in corpus (5)

• An almost symmetric Strang splitting scheme for the construction of high order composition methods
• Splitting methods for Fourier spectral discretizations of the strongly magnetized Vlasov-Poisson and the Vlasov-Maxwell system
• The anatomy of Boris type solvers and the Lie operator formalism for deriving large time-step magnetic field integrators
• A fundamental derivation of two Boris solvers and the Ge-Marsden theorem
• Error estimates of some splitting schemes for charged-particle dynamics under strong magnetic field