Toroidal Precession as a Geometric Phase
Toroidal precession is commonly understood as the orbit-averaged toroidal drift of guiding centers in axisymmetric and quasisymmetric configurations. We give a new, more natural description of precession as a geometric phase effect. In particular, we show that the precession angle arises as the holonomy of a guiding center's poloidal trajectory relative to a principal connection. The fact that this description is physically appropriate is borne out with new, manifestly coordinate-independent expressions for the precession angle that apply to all types of orbits in tokamaks and quasisymmetric stellarators alike. We then describe how these expressions may be fruitfully employed in numerical calculations of precession.
- Research Organization:
- Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- OSTI ID:
- 1057027
- Report Number(s):
- PPPL-4818
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Toroidal precession as a geometric phase
Canonical Hamiltonian theory of the guiding-center motion in an axisymmetric torus, with the different time scales well separated
A topological approach to the problem of charged particle trajectories in a toroidal axisymmetric configuration
Journal Article
·
Mon Jan 14 23:00:00 EST 2013
· Physics of Plasmas
·
OSTI ID:22113357
Canonical Hamiltonian theory of the guiding-center motion in an axisymmetric torus, with the different time scales well separated
Journal Article
·
Mon May 15 00:00:00 EDT 2006
· Physics of Plasmas
·
OSTI ID:20783065
A topological approach to the problem of charged particle trajectories in a toroidal axisymmetric configuration
Journal Article
·
Sun Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 1995
· Physics of Plasmas
·
OSTI ID:165746