The ponderomotive Lorentz force

Abstract

This paper describes a curious phenomenon: a particle in a rapidly varying potential is subject to an effective magnetic-like force. This force is in addition to the well-known ponderomotive force, but it has not been shown to exist before except for the linear case of a rapidly rotating quadratic saddle potential. We show that this is a universal phenomenon: the magnetic-like force arises generically in potential force fields with rapid periodic time dependence, including but not limited to rotational dependence.