A filtered two-step variational integrator for charged-particle dynamics in a moderate or strong magnetic field

Abstract

This article is concerned with a new filtered two-step variational integrator for solving the charged-particle dynamics in a mildly non-uniform moderate or strong magnetic field with a dimensionless parameter $\epsilon$ inversely proportional to the strength of the magnetic field. In the case of a moderate magnetic field ($\epsilon =1$), second-order error bounds and long-time near-conservation of energy and momentum are obtained. Moreover, the proof of the long-term analysis is accomplished by the backward error analysis. For $0<\epsilon \ll 1$, the proposed integrator achieves uniform second-order accuracy in the position and the parallel velocity for large step sizes, while attaining first-order accuracy with respect to the small parameter $\epsilon$ for smaller step sizes. The error bounds are derived from a comparison of the modulated Fourier expansions of the exact and numerical solutions. Moreover, long-time near-conservation of the energy and the magnetic moment is established using modulated Fourier expansion and backward error analysis. All the theoretical results of the error behavior and long-time near-conservation are numerically demonstrated by four numerical experiments.