Variational Principles for Reduced Plasma Physics

Abstract

Reduced equations that describe low-frequency plasma dynamics play an important role in our understanding of plasma behavior over long time scales. One of the oldest paradigms for reduced plasma dynamics involves the ponderomotive Hamiltonian formulation of the oscillation-center dynamics of charged particles (over slow space-time scales) in a weakly-nonuniform background plasma perturbed by an electromagnetic field with fast space-time scales. These reduced plasma equations are derived here by Lie-transform and variational methods for the case of a weakly-magnetized background plasma. In particular, both methods are used to derive explicit expressions for the ponderomotive polarization and magnetization, which appear in the oscillation-center Vlasov-Maxwell equations.