Automation of The Guiding Center Expansion
We report on the use of the recently-developed Mathematica package VEST (Vector Einstein Summation Tools) to automatically derive the guiding center transformation. Our Mathematica code employs a recursive procedure to derive the transformation order-by-order. This procedure has several novel features. (1) It is designed to allow the user to easily explore the guiding center transformation's numerous nonunique forms or representations. (2) The procedure proceeds entirely in cartesian position and velocity coordinates, thereby producing manifestly gyrogauge invariant results; the commonly-used perpendicular unit vector fields e1, e2 are never even introduced. (3) It is easy to apply in the derivation of higher-order contributions to the guiding center transformation without fear of human error. Our code therefore stands as a useful tool for exploring subtle issues related to the physics of toroidal momentum conservation in tokamaks
- Research Organization:
- Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC)
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-ACO2-09CH11466
- OSTI ID:
- 1072363
- Report Number(s):
- PPPL-4861
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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