Chasing Hamiltonian structure in gyrokinetic theory

Abstract

Hamiltonian structure is pursued and uncovered in collisional and collisionless gyrokinetic theory. A new Hamiltonian formulation of collisionless electromagnetic theory is presented that is ideally suited to implementation on modern supercomputers. The method used to uncover this structure is described in detail and applied to a number of examples, where several well-known plasma models are endowed with a Hamiltonian structure for the first time. The first energy- and momentum-conserving formulation of full-F collisional gyrokinetics is presented. In an effort to understand the theoretical underpinnings of this result at a deeper level, a \emph{stochastic} Hamiltonian modeling approach is presented and applied to pitch angle scattering. Interestingly, the collision operator produced by the Hamiltonian approach is equal to the Lorentz operator plus higher-order terms, but does not exactly conserve energy. Conversely, the classical Lorentz collision operator is provably not Hamiltonian in the stochastic sense.