Restoring momentum conservation to magnetized quasilinear diffusion
Abstract
Wave interactions with magnetized particles underly many plasma heating and current drive technologies. Typically, these interactions are modeled by bounce-averaging the quasilinear Kennel-Engelmann diffusion tensor over the particle orbit. However, as an object derived in a two-dimensional space, the Kennel-Engelmann tensor does not fully respect the conservation of four-momentum required by the action conservation theorem, since it neglects the absorption of perpendicular momentum. This defect leads to incorrect predictions for the wave-induced cross-field particle transport. Here, we show how this defect can easily be fixed, by extending the tensor from two to four dimensions and matching the form required by four-momentum conservation. The resulting extended tensor, when bounce-averaged, recovers the form of the diffusion paths required by action-angle Hamiltonian theory. Importantly, the extended tensor should be easily implementable in Fokker-Planck codes through a mild modification of the existing Kennel-Engelmann tensor.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.09532,
title = {Restoring momentum conservation to magnetized quasilinear diffusion},
author = {I. E. Ochs},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.09532},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
10 pages, 2 figures