1967/11/01 by T. J. Birmingham, T. G. Northrop, C.-G. Fälthammar +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics
paper · doi:10.1063/1.1762048
An equation which describes statistically the motion of charged particles in response to fluctuating electric and magnetic fields is derived. The particles are assumed to be moving in a mirror-type magnetic geometry. In addition to a static magnetic field there are small superposed fields fluctuating randomly on such a time scale that the first and second adiabatic invariants, M and J, are conserved, but the third or flux invariant φ is violated. By using second adiabatic theory a two dimensional diffusion equation is obtained valid on a much longer time scale than that of the fluctuations. Elements of the diffusion tensor are time—space correlations of fluctuation-induced perturbations in the guiding center drifts. These drift perturbations are systematically derived and shown to reduce simply in various special cases.