Charged particle isotropization in collisionless environments: turbulent magnetic fields as a conduit for random walks

We develop a simple model for the kinematics of charged particles in regions of magnetic turbulence. We approximate the local magnetic field as smoothly varying in strength and direction, where adiabatic invariance prevails, or as presenting rapid changes in direction or ‘kinks’. Particles execute guiding centre gyromotion around a field line. However, in analogy to kinetic theory for collisional environments, when the particle undergoes a rapid change in direction by some angle $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$ , it would instantaneously transition to Larmor motion around the new field line. This mimics Brownian motion wherein we replace collisions with other particles by rapid transitions or ‘collisions’ with other field lines. Using standard methods drawn from Brownian motion, we follow the evolution of the parallel and perpendicular components of the velocity, namely $v_{\Vert }$ and $v_{\bot }$ , and rigorously show that kinetic energy isotropization necessarily emerges.

Autonomous Geometrical Mechanics

This chapter examines the structure of the phase space of an integrable system as being constructed from invariant tori using the Arnold–Liouville integrability theorem, and periodic flow and ergodic flow are investigated using action-angle theory. Time-dependent mechanics is formulated by extending the symplectic structure to a contact structure in an extended phase space before it is shown that mechanics has a natural setting on a jet bundle. The chapter then describes phase space of integrable systems and how tori behave when time-dependent dynamics occurs. Adiabatic invariance is discussed, as well as slow and fast Hamiltonian systems, the Hannay angle and counter adiabatic terms. In addition, the chapter discusses foliation, resonant tori, non-resonant tori, contact structures, Pfaffian forms, jet manifolds and Stokes’s theorem.